


Unsight

by lawlipoppie



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Claiming, M/M, Slow Build, Vampires, Werewolves, twilight - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-20
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-10-21 08:07:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 38,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10681200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lawlipoppie/pseuds/lawlipoppie
Summary: Baek is a vampire and Jongin is a werewolf and this is perhaps a better love story than Twilight.





	Unsight

**Author's Note:**

> This thingy was written before anything else I've posted so far, and I'm not terribly proud of it, but it is still my baby and it deserves to be out there with the rest of its siblings (oh, this doesn't sound creepy, right?) 
> 
> I was a hardcore Twilight fan when I was a pimply and absolutely disgusting human being, and whilst I never really liked the story (shit was dumb as fuck) I was a sucker (haha, shitty 14yo pun) for the universe. Cuz hey, it's indeed a nice universe. Yeah. I twisted that a little too doe. 
> 
> Enjoy enjoy, don't drink blood kids, okay?

 

 

 

 

Her voice cracks as her whisper of shock soars into a muted scream. Eyelids wide, breath short and sweet. The smog of fuel and burning oil clots between them - the engine of the van is still running.

Steel keeps wrinkling under the palm of his hand, beginning to shape around his digits. A few more cracks as the door of the vehicle ruptures into sharp edges. The ring on his finger tries to break the bone.

Baekhyeon looks up at the lazy simmer of never-ending gloom whilst counting down seconds. Oncoming, is a gale of thoughts, questions, confusion. Before that happens, he spares a look at her – crouched, balled, trembling. Her warmth is all over him, insistent, and it breaches, scarring him deep within.

In a blink, he is gone.

 

 

 

“She smells…” Suho starts. His mind halts, drifting under a coarse veil of blankness. Bemusement.

“She reeks,” Baekhyeon supplies from two floors lower, eyes on the car leaving the hospital grounds. “Of dog.” His statement lacks inflection. It ignites a grain of worry within Suho.

“A new one.”

Baekhyeon is still inhaling deeply, feeding on the lingering stench as it burns to the very borders of his dysfunctional lungs. He is not quiet enough for Suho to miss the rattle of it.

 

 

 

“Sehun will be tempted by that,” Xiumin pronounces with a grimace. His lip then stretches beyond amusement, his gums peeking out, an enlivened pink to them.

The blood flows in slim rivulets between the tiles, straight dribbles that slow down as they begin to thicken, darken. Baekhyeon steps on a trail. It halts for a second, and then glides along the edge of the sole of his shoe. The fading aroma of it wafts in the air. “He will be on his knees, licking all of this clean,” Baekhyeon agrees.

“He’s sick enough of rabbits. Not to mention, he still finds them too cute.”

“Ah,” says Baekhyeon. “He hasn’t managed a deer yet.”  The imagery in Xiumin’s mind provides this fact. Four failures, same animal, its almost unimpressed eyes at Sehun’s repeated attempts at caging it. Then it’s the vivid, unmeaning flux of colour that is Xiumin’s memory of the taste of fresh blood. He had caught a bear. Baekhyeon notices the healed parallel gashes going from his neck to his nape. The leftover residue from the chafing of the bear’s claws on his skin, an off-white powder, staining the inky lapel of his coat.

Baekhyeon peers at the glow of his eyes, the dead maroon of his gaze gone and replaced by a blazing ochre. He needed this. Baekhyeon smiles, stepping away from the splash of crimson, and grabs the broken bag from the floor. Still a few mouthfuls left in it, but it is nearly expired. He wrinkles his nose.

“He’ll make it soon.”

Xiumin is not giving up on Sehun. He will learn to hunt like a pro.

Baekhyeon pours the rest of the blood into the sink, chasing it down the drain with some hydrogen peroxide.

 

 

 

She is dehydrated. The cobwebs beneath her skin wring with a dull cadence, swelling weakly, petering out towards the ends, caramelized. To Baekhyeon’s eyes, this motion appears iridescent, bright, beckoning.

He slinks away from the windowsill, wary with his steps as the olden fibres of the floorboards groan under his presence. From behind him, streams of air penetrate into the room, and her body twitches, skin breaking into gooseflesh. It is nippy, Baekhyeon recalls. Winter still adorns the sides of the road with patches of mushy grey snow.

He closes the thick curtains over the window, rather than closing it, as he would not risk having the rusty metal frame screech again, as it did when he opened it.

The room is too cramped to allow ample movement. Baekhyeon toes on the links between the boards, and manoeuvres himself into a chair; the back of it piled high with discarded clothing. He sits on the very edge of it, rigid, weight off the cushion, as to not leave an imprint on the plushness of it. This perch offers him a good angle to appease the surroundings from.

He peers long and calm at her figure twisted on the bed. Her bare legs are tossed over the comforter, spread apart, slightly twisted. The purple and black floral motifs of the fabric curl around the paleness of her skin. There is an intermittent wiggle to her toes, synchronizing with the flutter of her eyelashes. A holey, threadbare shirt tight over her chest from where it bunches under the inverted bow of her spine, the circling bumps of an areolae poking through the material along with a pebbled nipple. Long strings of hair lie knotted around her throat, one strand lining her jaw and climbing up her chin, stopping at the rose of her softly cleaved mouth.  

The ticks of three wristwatches, a too rapid wall clock- and another one, which is thought dead but still grants a second from era to era, compose the melody of this night. The bawl of nocturnal bugs is still shy; the season for their awakening has only just begun. Her short exhales provide the punctuation.

Baekhyeon’s gaze pivots. It is an infantile room. Hoarding of bagatelle, paint faded on the walls, on the toys, on everything.  Childhood gifts received with dislike prefaced by a polite smile thrown in piles in the corners. Towers of books, each taller than the next, daffodil grease at the edges of the pages, read once, twice, too many times litter the floor.  Pieces of obsolete technology, cases cracked, filled in with shiny glue that is now cemented with dust fill the rest of the available space.

He smiles, he feels, the stretch of it allured by underlying amusement. It is a space that speaks of clinginess, and the everlasting chase with something that never comes back, never waits for you. Being mortal enables this kind of tendency.

Baekhyeon has forgotten.

His head carefully settles on the rest as he relaxes into the chair, emboldened by the unforeseen calmness he finds in this plight. The sentiment deepens, then stabilizes as he stares and stares at the rhythmical clutch of her fingers around a fistful of comforter, entranced. He even breathes; shallow, through his mouth, matching the rhythm with hers. He tastes warmth, life on his tongue.

The tranquillity fractures gently. Blotches of colour, of sound begin trickling out from her mind. Baekhyeon listens, sees, keen as the spectacle tentatively unfolds, now conducted by disfigured memories- unfinished faces and places. They get louder, catch shape, twining with words, lips to say them.

Baekhyeon is still smiling, stiff cheeks plumping. Her dream courses into ridiculousness, as all do. Monsters and fruit salads, fires and falling and unspoken words.

When Baekhyeon had been human, an abused little kitchen help at the mansion of some skimpy counts, his only refuge had been dreamland - a heaven where his blistered skin would stop hurting. They had been fun, memorable, worth elaborating throughout the day, whenever he could afford himself some escapism. Too often, he would end up believing that he was part of that utopia where there was no pain, no chains. Then twenty lashes would slice through his back, and Baekhyeon would believe no more.

To nurture this newfound melancholy, Baekhyeon focuses his all on the flashes of her dreams. They follow no story line, there is no protagonist - just the petrified vista of a scenery so vivid that it ascribes desolation. It remains like this for a few of her heartbeats, until it loses saturation and blurs, becoming the backdrop of a person now poising in the centre.

She feels happy, safe, comfortable as she enters the frame and beams right back at them. She knows this person, sees them clearly.

But Baekhyeon cannot distinguish this visage; the lineation of them diffuses, melting into the overcasting monochromes. It loses more and more contour, edges gone by the time her gladness peaks, flourishes with ardour.

The chair creaks as he jerks forward, as if proximity will wipe away the opaque wash of her dream. It all bears a semblance to blindness, an ailment that leaves a chasm in the arsenal of his senses.

Baekhyeon frowns, a cursory slit cutting between his eyebrows at tissue that has not been folded in a long time. He remains there, rooted in his spot, until the sky starts catching light, and her awareness rises, mixing in.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon passes the first curb, six more to go until he reaches the house, and he can already pick up the buzz of Suho’s occupancy. He looks to his left, where a baby snake is looping around a corroded pine tree. It struggles and struggles, then the branch snaps and falls to the ground. It’s heavy enough to crush the snake.

He blinks, then keeps walking.

 

 

 

The door isn’t even shut behind him before he is assailed with malaise, dread, a strewn little storm, all of it Suho’s. Sehun is near him, soundless, and it is because of this that Baekhyeon knows that this is bad, because Suho’s affection for Sehun is so strong that it rarely falls in second place in his thoughts.  

Baekhyeon shuts it out, aiming to play dumb, unaware, at least for now. He pads loudly to the fridge to grab a bag. Four left. He takes the smallest one, for her sleep has been restless this time around, a lot of stirring, sweating, and it has inflamed a tiny figment of thirst within him, the bite of his canines indenting inside his lip. It’s merely an annoyance.

He climbs the stairs up to the veranda, following the iterant sound of metal snapping, overripe rust at the joints adding lag, a rasp. The delicate arch of Suho’s thumb over the rings of the scissors comes into view.

Baekhyeon takes a seat on the small sofa, nibbling off the tip of the bag. It is too cold and stale, lacking vibrancy, and for a second, Baekhyeon recoils at the taste. A shard of ice slips into his mouth. It’ll take a while for it to melt. He gathers a few more shards before he feels soothed.

In front of him, Sehun’s legs are stretched out, his back hunched for Suho to reach him easily. His scissors are poised with purpose, a grace to his grip as he judges the fall of the strands around Sehun’s face. Strong brows, strong bone structure, a narrow mouth. Even before he died, Sehun had a beauty to him that inspired confidence, sternness. Misleading. However, Baekhyeon still understands the attraction, even if he knows Sehun is a big baby.  

The light is weak, a silver glow filtering through the green of the surrounding forest. Sehun’s eyes dart from the scenery to the bag in Baekhyeon’s grip, once, twice, gaze matte.  He is sated, wholly, not a trace of famishment, but it is the domineering whim of curiosity that makes him fixate on it.

“It really isn’t very good,” Baekhyeon says, swallowing the ice, just as a Suho cards his hand again through a tuft of hair, leaving its ends dripping. One drop slides down his forehead, the length of his nose, and then into Sehun’s mouth. “Not as good as that, anyway.”

Baekhyeon knows – the water Suho materializes has a taste, faint, fragrant and mollifying, depending on his state of mind.

Suho snorts, genuine amusement, pure, lone, occupying his thoughts for a fraction. He snips off an angle next to Sehun’s temple. “Haven’t seen this face in so long,” he breathes, so quiet, syllables formed in his throat and left hanging in the air. A tender smile stretches upon his lips, telling of the florets of love behind it. He cleans up some more, cleaning the mess of black hair into a fitting frame into around Sehun’s features. He scrapes it back and forth with that sculpted ivory comb he’s had since he was a little prodigal son. It will perish to dust pretty soon.  

Baekhyeon proffers the last sip in the bag to Suho, to dissipate the warm surge between the two. They can never have enough privacy in his company. It is a welcomed distraction.

Suho hesitates, intent on the outstretched hand before he snatches it. It is in a vulturine manner, a too tight grip, and Baekhyeon reads restlessness into it. Suho is surprised himself at his little fit, but only after he drinks it all, a bead smearing at the edge of his mouth, thinning down his chin. His eyes glaze over. It is not satisfying, Baekhyeon knows, but it adduces comfort. Usually.  But not this time.

Suho’s memory sizzles, figments of it surfacing. He is thinking of human blood, of biting. Of a young, candied collum dying under his jaw.

Sehun lunges to kiss him, neck craning, open lips landing on Suho’s, seeking to taste the blood. He is immediately denied, pushed down by a relentless force. Sehun whines, but doesn’t fight him. Leastways, Suho’s abysmal daze shatters.

Baekhyeon laughs, light peals that dissipate into the night. It curbs the thoughts, but not the mood.

“Who is it?” Baekhyeon asks, after Suho has not even bothered to wipe off the stain on his face. He clips two millimetres wrong, too high above the brow bone. He evens out the edge, cutting more, purely preoccupied with it. Sehun can’t stop looking at the crusted smudge red smudge left on his Suho’s face.

“A friend.” Suho says, in dissonance with his reverie. It is someone whom he was close with, but not in pleasant terms. Tolerance at best. A bond forced by circumstances. Two snippets of murder flicker, shameless feeding.

Suho regards him warily.

“You woke up together,” Baekhyeon says. This is a part of the story he wasn’t aware of. Sehun’s interest in piqued too, but dimly, subdued by his mild lust.

A few jiffies, an imperceptible nod before Suho gets back to clipping, so much faster, his ancient scissors snipping away. He enjoyed hairdressing when he was young, a craft of the peasants. He was even ridiculed for it, given he’s been the oldest son of an upper class family, planned for way greater things than hairdressing. Suho still carries a few manners of that time; still too polite, still careful, attiring himself in garments akin to regalia, a dignity to him, and a little obsession with hierarchies.

The new thing Baekhyeon finds out tonight is that Suho hadn’t been kidnapped alone. There was another young man taken along, another snobby heir, and they’d both been transformed during the raid. 

And apparently, this friend doesn’t abstain from humans.

“We’ll welcome him accordingly,” says Baekhyeon. Suho puts the scissors down, exhales.

Sehun stands and turns around, checking his reflection in the window. He likes the new haircut. Baekhyeon likes it too.

“I’m hot,” Sehun says, pushing his fringe away from his forehead and posing a little. Baekhyeon tries not to titter, but he does anyway. He enjoys arid humour.

“And there’s a…,” Sehun begins.

“Oh yes yes,” Baekhyeon gets himself off the sofa, starting to unbutton his shirt. “I stink, yes.” His skin itches slightly too. He lets the cloth drop to the floor.

 Baekhyeon then licks his finger and wipes away the blood from Suho’s face. “Now you’re hot too. We are all hot.”

 

 

 

Baekhyeon has a small empire of bottled pigments on makeshift vanity his room. In the morning, he cakes it upon on his face, dense layers to bury the sparkle of his cheeks. The sun looms over the clouds, sometimes breaking through, and Baekhyeon will glow and will blind and jeopardize all the secrecy.

The pile of silver contact lens wrappers grows, and this time, it spills over the little bin, pooling at the base. He leaves them there. It is his only way of keeping track of how many times he’s gone out among the earthlings.

His eyes are a vile brown after he puts them in, pupils seemingly blown to the very limit. The red will bleed through in just a few hours.

But he is colourful, in the end, looking sick enough to seem alive. There is now a yellow tint on the high planes of his face instead of the usual streaky pink given by the dormant copper the lies in his veins. The blue shadows are willed away, falling into a mauve that can be attributed to the grievous atmosphere.

He’d claimed to be suffering of some form of Cyanosis when he registered for this school. Thyroid malfunctions, a pinch of anaemia, too. Had given so many details of his condition, falsified documents from Suho, that it ended up vague, entirely too believable, and had also gathered a sympathetic grin from the secretary, lipstick riving.

Baekhyeon plays the lead in a curtained masquerade, and chasing the spotlights makes him disregard just how damned he is.

 

 

 

It is raining already.

Taeyeon is shuffling in place next to her truck, backpack dangling off the crook of her arm and the hood of her hoodie cloaking most of her face. She is waiting for him. It is for the third day in a row that she’s lingering, expecting.  

Baekhyeon approaches her quietly, footfalls completely muted. The last student enters the building - no one else is left in the parking lot. Baekhyeon forgoes prudence, and just sneaks at his natural pace, rounding her back and springing in front of her. Her heart does a yummy little jump, effervescent surprise squeezing it before she even registers his arrival.

Then she smiles at him, focusing. Luminosity marbles in her irises, gladness, want condensed into the brown.

The predator in him is happy for this reaction, for her clinging to him, considering him a potential friend, for she still has no one else to stick to.

He smiles, tight and real, the corners of his mouth narrowed so his canines don’t peek out, and concentrating the joy in the curvature of his eyes.

“Nice to see you, stranger,” Taeyeon says, a shy blush crawling up her cheeks. Her scent is unsullied, her skin covered in dried sweat. She is a late night showerer. For breakfast, she’s had something high in carbohydrates, toast perhaps, white, with strawberry jam. It brews leisurely- in half an hour, she’ll be at her sweetest.

Her beam is still so wide, relentless. Baekhyeon shall stop pondering over her hypothetical edibility.

“Bet you say that to every stranger,” he quips. 

“Just to those who won’t quit being strangers already.” Her retort is quick. It falls directly from her tongue, not processed beforehand. She’s a bit sulky.

Baekhyeon chuckles, a thin sound that gives the impression that he has been taking deep breaths all along. “Visited my sick aunt,” he offers to her escalating curiosity.

It is not even entirely a lie. His aunt had been very sick at some point indeed, and she should’ve died because of it. Instead, she’d quelled with Baekhyeon’s fangs sinking into her upper trapezius. He didn’t even make it to the jugular, as he was in too much of a frenzy. He had sucked all the cancer out of her. And then the life too.

“We’ll be late,” Baekhyeon reminds. He allows his shoulder to brush hers in an invitation.  

 

 

 

Inside the building, eyes draw to them. Baekhyeon is aware of how he roams the young minds; how concerned they are of his general peculiarity. They think he is diseased, a weird genius, a rich brat, out casting himself out of arrogance. There is also fright, a kind that is found unreasonable, as he seems unnatural, synthetic even, human but not entirely, and they all tumble in the pit of the uncanny valley because of it.

Runnels of whispers disperse in their wake. Taeyeon keeps close to him as they walk step in step.

Baekhyeon doesn’t bother listening.

 

 

 

He drives Taeyeon home after classes are over. The rainfall has been heavier than usual, and the tires of her truck would have made for a risky ride.

Her scent seeps and seeps into the upholstery, and after she’s closed the car door, halting to send him one little hand wave before going inside the house, Baekhyeon gauges that it will take a while for it to rinse off. He lowers all the windows.

As he wheels back on the road, he catches the scrutiny of her father through the thin curtain. It is a bad impression - Baekhyeon’s car is too nice. It shifts to ire, to him thinking that Taeyeon may be a gold digger, then disappointment at himself for thinking this, then bitterness filling in the memory of his wife leaving him exactly for a man with wealth, with stability.

Baekhyeon accelerates.

 

 

 

Sehun had dived into the forest, dallying in the very heart of it. He’s with the birds He’s always liked the sound of them, their plumage, their play. It is a pleasure that goes a bit against his demeanour - he is such an excitable boy, impatient - and then here he is, seeking quietude as a hobby.  

He’s been rooted in the same spot, barefoot and shirtless, completely unmoving, trying to coax an owl to sit on his shoulder.

Baekhyeon’s contacts have begun running down his cheeks, melting away. The tracks are parched by the time they reach the line of his jaw, and in front of him, Sehun’s neck finally lolls to the side as the talons of the bird curl under his collarbone. Sehun is so still that the bird makes to bite at him, sink into him as if he is inanimate.  

“I made a friend,” Sehun says, airless, muscles undulating, and nothing escaping. He locks the gold of his eyes with the gold of the owl, and it tenses, speckled feathers flaring. “This should tickle,” Sehun ponders, sensing the contact. The thin skin of his neck isn’t thin anymore, anesthetized to physical feeling of such delicacy. He remembers in great detail how tickling should feel. It should make him giggle.

He’s just barely passed the stage of a newborn. Baekhyeon doesn’t tell him how it will get so much worse, so much number before he even passes a decade.

Sehun shrugs and the bird flies off.

“That was short,” Baekhyeon utters, eventually drawing near. His shoes are leather, soles thick. It’s hard to slither on the forest bed whilst wearing them.

“We’ll meet again,” Sehun says. He remains frozen until the owl is out of his field of vision. Then he twists to meet Baekhyeon, launching himself in an embrace.

“Missed me so much,” Baekhyeon says flatly, even as he goes soft in the hold. Sehun noses into his coat. He likes the scent of humans so much. More than anything, it is because he misses them, but he refuses to admit this to himself.  Baekhyeon links his hands around Sehun’s back, keeping him there as he delves into the fabric.

Baekhyeon feels him inhaling less and less, his proximity slackening. He’s caught whiff of the malodour of mutt that lies deep in Baekhyeon’s clothes.

Wind begins rustling powerfully. Sehun puts distance between them. His nose wrinkles.

“Are you  _cleansing_ me?” Baekhyeon asks, laughter in his voice. Branches snap around them. Then to his left, an entire tree. Sehun’s not very good at manipulating his power yet. Or he just dislikes the stench that much.

“I am.” The wind intensifies.

“Hey, you have a buddy of the wrong species too. Now stop before you make it snow.”  

He relents, expression sour. In the dwelling silence, Baekhyeon reads worry and longing in Sehun’s mind. It is a first for such unease to take the pedestal. 

“They’ll be back soon,” Baekhyeon says. Suho and Xiumin are in the next city over to get a bigger supply of blood to make sure that their upcoming friend is kept satiated. “Until then though,” he continues, removing his attention from Sehun’s thoughts, “let’s catch something. Just for fun.”

“Are  _you_  considered a catch too?” Sehun is too smug.

“Darling, stick to your rats.”

“Bitch,” Sehun whispers before bolting for his life.

Baekhyeon rolls his eyes. “Kids these days, where the fuck did all the respect go,” he mutters, leaping right after him.  

 

 

 

It passes the cusp of twilight when Baekhyeon stops.

Up north, the timbers thin out, giving in to smooth pastures. He’s almost out of the county. Sehun outside his range - his endless legs privilege him with a baffling speed. Alas, he relies more on brute decisions than rigorous assessment of his surroundings. Perhaps he is a bit lost.

Baekhyeon follows the rim of a tiny meadow, the middle of it faintly illuminated - it’s only Waxing Crescent. Beyond it, Baekhyeon comes to a halt. Three lanes of thin footpaths cut through the thickness of the forest.

Baekhyeon steps on the discoloured ground. It lacks softness, nearly impermeable, well-trodden.

He presumed the border would be something more aggressive. A clean, impassable division of massive walls made out of ferroconcrete and barbed wires reaching towards the sky.

Instead, tiny flowers are just starting to close along the trail, almost fairytale-esque in their presence:  Anemone, Viola Odorata, Ficaria Verna.

As he veers east, he meets traces of Sehun. He is indeed far away, having taken after a family of young foxes. They make for a fun chase rather than a meal.  Baekhyeon considers joining him, just to tease, and he almost steers off the byway when he stiffens, stricken.

A sip of that fragrance carries through the air, more intense mingling with the vapour of flora. It is heady, bright, crude, even; nothing like the trampled scent ferried by Taeyeon’s flesh. The owner of it might be nearby, and Baekhyeon is embedded in his spot, searching, insight unchained. Everything else falls to naught around him as he dismisses each detail to solely focus on the smell.

All he attains is an influx of composure, a cardinal form of it, but no other proof of another presence.

Through this tumult, he does register the ripple breaching his periphery. Twigs break under heavy footsteps, four of them. It’s quick, driven. The animal is after him, even though his behaviour presents no threat.

Baekhyeon shifts slightly, following a trail of the scent that is so fresh, so strong that he can almost feel the warmth of it. The owner could be within reach. 

Before Baekhyeon can react, he’s slammed to the ground, entombed as he sinks into the mud from the brute weight on top of him. He is unresponsive, having lost his balance after he's been barrelled into with such force. Baekhyeon remains as he is, curiously, relishing in the sensation. The animal keeps attempting to shred him to pieces, and Baekhyeon just lays there, serene.

Soon, the pressure is gone in a clamour of long limbs. There is a silent crick of a fracturing spine beneath layers of fat and muscle. The boar manages a quarter of a scream, then some feeble noises, gagging as they ebb out. Its neck is not completely twisted, keeping the heart beating a bit longer, so blood can pulse into Sehun’s mouth.

Baekhyeon’s stare flops to the side. It is a huge boar, well fed. Sehun can barely straddle it. His ecstasy is thunderous.

A cackle commences above, beads clashing on leaves. It peels away the dirt covering them, and Baekhyeon doesn’t blink, so the dirty rain water falls into his eyes. He can taste it at the back of his throat - chalky.   

 “Not bad at all,” Sehun mutters, a liquidly pitch to it. The boar is dead now. Sehun wasn’t even hungry.

“Swallow before you speak,” Baekhyeon chides. The chalk builds up. A flash of lightning slays through the settled darkness.

Baekhyeon drags himself over and licks over the punctures Sehun left.

“I hate this kind of fur,” he says, spitting the strands stuck onto his lips. It is not bad at all, indeed, iron-rich and hot. Baekhyeon has no desire to have any more.

“The one thing bunnies are better at,” says Sehun.

“You’d know.”

Sehun is proud of himself, accomplished. He’s finally made a significant catch, and it was elegant just right, too. It wasn’t that Sehun couldn’t kill; it was that he would make a mess- crushed organs flying everywhere, carcass splintered open. If such a cadaver were to be discovered, it would make the news. Brave people venturing around looking to hunt down a beast would be quite the nuisance. Hosting a graveyard with all their leftovers isn't an option either. 

The boar has no visible damage on it. Even the perforation of Sehun’s fangs is discreet.

“I can’t die,” Baekhyeon says. “You can’t die either. Not anymore.”

This was what made him do it, the prospect of Baekhyeon being in danger, being hurt. It was this debris of humanity that made him slaughter properly.

 _Why did I have to worry about that then?_ Sehun doesn’t voice this query. His stance is sharp and his eyes even more so.

“I…don’t know,” Baekhyeon says, too true, and it must convey on his face, as shortly, Sehun nods and stops thinking about it.

“Do I still have to bury this?”

“No, but you can still say a prayer or two.”

Sehun scoffs. He’d been a diligent church boy, but against his will. “I don’t think God’s power is invested in me anymore.”

Before they leave, Baekhyeon lingers, listens - no movement, and the scent is all washed away, vanished from the air and from Baekhyeon’s memory.

 

 

 

A metal cooling box sits on the kitchen counter. It is bigger than usual. 

 “A greedy friend he is, I see,” says Baekhyeon, stepping into the yellow glow feathering out of the villa.  Xiumin faces him, donning a pleasant smile. Suho is just entering from the garage.

“I really hope he’s changed,” he says. A tall stack of papers is nestled in his arms.

Sehun is then looming over him, as filth from both of them pools on the floor. Baekhyeon’s foundation has stained the front of his black shirt. He’s wearing a few leaves and small spider in his breast pocket.

Xiumin studies them. “You two had fun, I presume.”

Suho isn’t happy though, flying by his side in a flash, worry etched on his face. Sehun is covered in sludge, dark on his alabaster torso, and cherry on the inside of his lip. Xiumin advances as well, rapt on Sehun’s appearance.

“So much fun,” Baekhyeon says, jumping a bit on his feet to shake off as much of the icky fluid as possible, before he is going for the box. He opens it, peeks at the labels – it’s all O negative - and then closes the lid.

Sehun is smiling so bright. Baekhyeon is stifled by the triumph emanating from him.

Xiumin turns to him, mock-disdain on his face. “After battling with this for five years, can’t believe you’re the one taking the victory away from me.”

“It was a baby boar,” Baekhyeon lies, for some reason. Suho is running fingers through Sehun’s wet hair. There is arousal between them. “It’s only a mini victory,” he continues. ”You’ll be the one making him take down a tiger.”

They both peer at Sehun and Suho, at the closing space between them. They know it is bad when they see another puddle forming on the floor from Suho’s hand, clear and turquoise tinted. He’s so enamoured he can’t even control his power.

“This will be a loud night,” Baekhyeon says, grimacing at the images he picks up from them. Xiumin cringes.

Sehun’s hands are on Suho’s hips. In vain, they search to bruise already.

“Extremely loud?” Xiumin asks, fright in his tone.

“Extremely loud.”

They link gazes, agreement in them. They walk out. 

 

 

 

He ends up pursuing refuge in Taeyeon’s room yet again. His hasn’t changed out of his attire, dirty, but dry at least.

Baekhyeon leans on the sill, not touching anything else around. Her dream has already started, her body writhing lightly. The act is in a familiar place now, on a bridge thrown over a deserted river. She is riding a giant chicken and cheeping along.

He doesn’t laugh, but he senses the fester of it in his chest. The absurdity never eases.  

He’s been here watching her dreams enough times to now know that the person he cannot see is a boy. Often, even as the dream hollows to an end, the boy doesn’t appear. He may be mentioned, just a figment of him; a hand loosely holding hers, a dimpled chin - and Baekhyeon still can’t see his face, his contour. The boy is entirely concealed.

It keeps Baekhyeon coming back for more, as a means to satiate the curiosity, the searing intrigue. Perhaps it is a form of vulnerability to have something take control of him like this, make him risk so much. 

This time, the boy doesn’t appear. Baekhyeon waits, testy, not entirely silent.

Then he notices the tiny bouquet of cobalt flowers resting on her nightstand, tied with a grass blade.

He manages to hop out the window the moment her eyes crack open, a sound of confusion spilling over her lips.

 

 

 

“He’s on our estate,” Suho says all of a sudden, fixing on a point over the horizon. His thumb slips from Sehun’s mouth, who was sucking on it, head thrown back and eyelashes in a flutter. The human blood that has been smeared on it is all gone - Sehun is initiated.

Baekhyeon has had immediate gratification – sucked dry the first human he saw after he awoke - nothing intimate, controlled like this. Suho’s thumb dips again into the blood, then is pressed to Sehun’s eager mouth.

“I’ll fetch him,” Baekhyeon says, “I’m the one everyone loves at first sight.” He yearns to leave them have the moment, dropping the files that he had been looking through. Patient records of those healed enough to race their way to a slow death.

He leaves them in disarray on the desk - he’ll come back to them later; then jumps out the balcony.

It will be a short walk, Baekhyeon appraises only a few strides into the woods, grasping the tendrils of sentience. There is nothing definite as of yet, but enough for him to have what to hound. The newcomer is near. Baekhyeon can faintly hear the movement through the dry greenery. 

Then the clarity fades to the left, perpendicular to Baekhyeon’s direction. Its headway hastens. He’s going towards the border.

“Bloody hell,” Baekhyeon groans, launching into an urgent sprint.

 A tree shrilly breaks off the skyline, taking down another few little ones with it. Baekhyeon soon discerns the static of teeth attempting to sink into ossified flesh, collisions, and snarls of anger.

He finds them when there’s a paw on Kyeongsu, where his sternum has caved in under the pressure, grey innards peeking through the fracture. A string of saliva drips from the open snout of the wolf on Kyeongsu’s face, landing at the corner of his lips before it slides further inside through the gap of them. Utmost disgust bursts in Kyeongsu’s mind, and it is then that Baekhyeon reacts, throwing himself at the wolf, pushing it off then standing above Kyeongsu.

He lifts both palms, attempting to convey that he means no harm. The tension on the spine of the animal doesn’t lessen, its curvature taut. Baekhyeon takes a few steps back until Kyeongsu is isolated between him and a tree trunk.

The suspicion shifts, its wide orbs incising into the coral of Baekhyeon, for Baekhyeon’s hostility is dim, barely even there. The wolf approaches half a stride, searching, and Baekhyeon is slapped with even more of that sweet miasma. His body tightens, burns from it. The wolf comes even closer, its head aligning with Baekhyeon’s shoulder.

It is dizziness that Baekhyeon feels, faint on his legs, as he collapses a bit into Kyeongsu. The wolf’s ears twitch, stance softening. Its fur is rust coloured, cuts of white around its paws. It has a young glow, thin, as if the strands have just grown.

Before he catches himself, he feels himself smiling, overtaken by a quaint brand of merriment. He has the urge to reach out and touch, palm already moving for it.

The wolf growls, a cunning rumble as its teeth flash, just as Kyeongsu escapes and aims a kick. Baekhyeon snaps an elbow into his chest, the sutured cavity reopening under the force. He has reacted too late; the wolf’s shoulder is dislocated by Kyeongsu’s kick. Kyeongsu struggles under Baekhyeon’s hold.

The wold growls, lies low, preparing for attack. Baekhyeon pushes at Kyeongsu, makes them retreat until they have passed back into their territory, and he can’t see, nor hear the wolf anymore. He turns in time to see Suho, a frown twisting his forehead, and Sehun towering behind him.

“Hello, love,” Kyeongsu greets, breaking the silence as he advances towards the pair. He pushes a part of his guts back in through his ribs, and it seals just as he stands in front of Suho. For an instant, his eyes go over him, up at Sehun, before reverting down. “Oh, it seems now I stand no chance of seducing you now. What a pity.”

 

 

 

Baekhyeon picks at the cloth of the couch, at the stitches making up its pattern. He keeps at it until it comes undone all along the edge. His body is prostrated over the thin mattress, over some books too, and they dig into his stomach where his organs would pulse if they had any reason to.

He catches fragments of the conversation downstairs. It is mainly Xiumin’s voice responding to Kyeongsu’s kind of slurred words. He has a dirty, unpolished manner of talking, not having mingled with humans very much.

“Haven’t had a roll in the hay with a mutt in a while,” Kyeongsu says, serenity in his tone even as he stumbles over the grammar.

Baekhyeon almost hears Sehun rolling his eyes. Within Suho, composure prevails. They will accept this friend in the family. They really have nothing better to do than to stick together at this point.

Sehun is thinking things from time to time, for Baekhyeon, narrating the whole scene for him in a prissy style. Baekhyeon finds himself chuckling when Kyeongsu smiles and he has such full lips and _his smile is heart shaped?_ Sehun panics a little.  _What if Suho still wants him? My lips aren’t as great, fuck. The hell, even I want to kiss him. Wait! No no no_ —

Baekhyeon rolls around until he lands on the floor with a thud. He picks at the threads of the carpet now, his legs dangling out of the wide-open French doors. It rains on his soles. The drops are still warmer than his skin.

It is Xiumin who gives the briefing on the border, the armistice, the ‘you will not touch any human’.

“A war these days won’t be as fun anyway,” is Kyeongsu’s manner of agreeing to the terms. Behind the guise, there is frankness.

“You’re a doctor now?” Kyeongsu asks Suho then, and he is bending over in the chair. Baekhyeon has so many sets of eyes to see the whole scene through; he doesn’t even have to be there to catch all the details of Kyeongsu’s gait. “Suits you,” he says when Suho doesn’t reply. “As the leader of this little clan. A proper mama. Please be mine too.”

 _He’s_ my _daddy, you don’t get to call him mama, motherfucker_ , Sehun seethes. Even Kyeongsu is amused by how intense his glare is.

“Oh, you’re so fresh,” Kyeongsu notes, and Sehun wants to lynch him. 

“We’ll see,” Suho acknowledges tightly, his first words since Kyeongsu’s arrival.

 

 

 

The meeting breaks soon, Xiumin dragging Kyeongsu into the library. He intends to teach him some language.

 Xiumin likes him. He finds his idiosyncrasy, as coarse as it is, strangely charismatic. He too has taken a liking to Kyeongsu cordate simper.

Sehun is busy ravaging Suho, for there is doubt and the tiniest smudge of jealousy that needs to be eliminated. Suho is gleeful, overbrimming with it. He feels so loved. Baekhyeon will reassure Sehun about how fucking whipped Suho is, but another time, after this whole ordeal stops being funny.

Baekhyeon is left in silence, just him and the memories. There is a zing through his body from where he had contact with the wolf. It brings satisfaction; and also a deeper sting, greediness for more. Even through the absolute blindness, he had deciphered how the urge to slash had waned in the wolf, how he had softened. It wasn’t just Baekhyeon.

His cloudy recollection of the wolf loops before his eyes, a broken replay, as he twists bit by bit, tufts of the carpet braided through his fingers. He feels as if he is sleeping, weightless, dopey, dreaming a ridiculous dream starring a nameless hero.

 

 

 

“There’s my saviour,” Kyeongsu salutes as Baekhyeon walks out onto the driveway. A string of bird faeces is still dribbling down the windshield of his car. Baekhyeon turns and glimpses him blankly. At least he is wearing clothes, decent ones, Xiumin’s, so  _too_  decent.

“Do you want to be my slave already?” he asks. It is still too early to pretend smugness. The sun is barely rising, lazy. He leans on the hood of the car - he has a while to spare for the new family member.

“I want your name at least.” Turns out, for Kyeongsu it is not too early to be smug.  

“Baekhyeon,” he offers. It still doesn’t sound the same way his mother used to enunciate it. It never will.

“I’m— “

“I know yours. You refer to yourself in third person. And you are quite loud about it too.” And Suho. Suho couldn’t stop thinking his name, his deeds, for days.

“Kyeongsu,” he finishes anyway.

Baekhyeon sees that his smile is indeed heart-shaped, even if there is no cordiality to it, just a set of bared teeth with the fortunate framing of deceptive lips. It is the pleasantry smile, the ‘I must appease’ smile. Baekhyeon can almost imagine him as the fussy son of some fat aristocrat as he bosses people around that are not his to boss.

Still, there’s something different about him from last night, a bit less transparency. Baekhyeon doesn’t mind, not at all, he finds. One less pandemonium to make sense of.

“I’m a few times your age,” Kyeongsu says. “Perhaps more.” He’s over 400, like Suho, Baekhyeon picks. And he is right.

“Try twenty times,” Baekhyeon counters. He checks his reflection in the window of Suho’s car next to his and notices a smudge of unblended foundation on his right cheek. He taps at it until it fades in with the rest. Meanwhile, the calculations don’t really come together in Kyeongsu’s mind. “I died at seventeen. I’ll always be seventeen, and seventeen year olds go to school. Brings me a little peace, as if I belong there.”

“Stop prying,” Kyeongsu says instead, as a smirk too enigmatic adorns his lips.

 _Oh_. Baekhyeon’s mouth parts. He’s met a handful of humans who could _feel_ when he read them, but never a vampire. Kyeongsu turns out to be this exception. “Can’t. You’re too distracting.”

The perplexing expression redoubles. He knows about Taeyeon. Without having had any contact at all, he knows about her. The trace is gone, fast.

Baekhyeon becomes distressed as he searches through the bleak fragments of latency. He’s hiding so well. He isn’t 400 for nothing.

“I’ll help you.”

Then Baekhyeon cannot hear him anymore.

 

 

 

Taeyeon’s hair is slick, greasy at the roots, bangs garnered on either side of her forehead. She didn’t wash it last night as she usually does. She hasn’t been home.

“You haven’t studied,” Baekhyeon speaks, sliding over with his pen in hand to correct something on her homework. It is good enough for a start. A tiny smile turns the corners of her mouth, caught, and Baekhyeon is hit with the briefest splash of recollection, a blur among the clear.

“Been over at a friend’s overnight. It was his birthday.”

“You’ve got a friend?” Baekhyeon asks, with fake surprise, searching. Her fist lands on his shoulder, and Baekhyeon forgets to relax, so the flesh doesn’t dent. Belatedly, he flounders to the side as if he is not stone.

“He’s been my friend for a while now. Though,” Taeyeon’s nose wrinkles, but fondly so, “he’s a snotty brat who finally turned eighteen.”

Baekhyeon laughs, the nice crinkly sound as his mouth opens wide. Eighteen. Probably not a lie. This boy might as well have only roamed this earth for eighteen years. He isn’t offered get any more glimpses of him. “A snotty brat,” Baekhyeon repeats slowly.

“I grew up with him. I’ve got to stand him now.” 

“You have bad taste,” he tuts. “I’m offended. We should break up.”

“You’re a high quality friend. My taste can’t be that bad,” she counters, shaking her head, the pencil in her hand starting to tremble. It is a bit of anxiousness, an indulgent simpler carving all the way to her eyes, and Baekhyeon realizes it at the same time as she does, at this very moment, that she has sunken in the pit of infatuation with him. She didn’t mean to. After he’d saved her from being crushed by that van, she didn’t approach him out of romantic interest. She’s near just to gratify fascination, to keep alienation at bay.

Baekhyeon takes a bite of his sandwich, chewing deliberately. “Highest quality,” he corrects after swallowing. It tastes terrible, but the upward tilt of his mouth has not dissipated.

 Her stare persists on his, and maybe she sees the dissolution of the lenses, and the darkness spreading in rivulets into his waterline, to the monster leering in the depths.

She doesn’t.

Taeyeon bends back over her book. “Professor Lee really doesn’t like me,” she mutters with a sigh, noting down the details of another problem.

When the bell rings, and they have gathered all their supplies, Baekhyeon chances a touch to her, just the inside of her wrist, just two fingers of his ghosting over the suddenly jumpy pulse there. It beings a weird feeling to his cheeks, filling with coldness, but it burns the same as a blush would.  

The touch is too short for her to remark the temperature difference.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon waits at the gate of the local hospital. The building is small and dingy, plaster chipped off by the edges of the barred windows. Baekhyeon idles near a couple, each cradling a cup of vending machine coffee. It is cheap enough to conquer the smell of drilled, leaking veins.

He has so little to listen to, and it is somewhat comforting how blank people’s minds can be once swamped in pain and hopelessness.

The lab coat is trailing around Suho’s shoulders as he approaches. His nametag is sloppily hanging by the opened needle going through his pocket. Baekhyeon fixes it for him once he is near enough.

“We’re going for a little chat over the frontier,” Suho speaks. Baekhyeon reaches for the car keys in his coat before his intention to do so is even formulated.

“Does Kyeongsu intend to seek revenge?” Baekhyeon inquires. They would’ve heard movement by now if the other side got mad about breaching the border. It’s a week later and still quiet, devoid of an entire pack of angry mutts all over their grounds.

 “He doesn’t?” Suho’s eyebrow twitches. Distress there, yet again, from that thing that he keeps concealing from Baekhyeon.

He shrugs. “He’s too careful with me. Masks himself with mathematics quite often. I can’t tell if he is mad or not about that attack.”

“Ah, he was a little genius when mortal.”

“In Latin,” Baekhyeon adds, already walking toward Suho’s car. It is a serious car, unlike his own, meant for a kid with a just-gotten licence. And he quite likes driving.

Along the road, it is a frail little blueberry bush that marks the border. Late in spring, the token of their enmity sprouts white, bell shaped blossoms. After it, the scenery changes rapidly; tall houses built like shacks and people busying themselves outside in open yards of similar construct. 

The place has a certain charm, one to warrant an adventurous childhood. Baekhyeon keeps the speed steady, legal.

A row of rusty vehicles lines the house they are looking for. It is fenced, spread out in tiny wings, indeed resembling a den to an eye that know what to look for.

Chanyeol’s head peeks over the tall fence, and he steps onto the stone road just as Suho and Baekhyeon do. The characteristic stench is dense in the air. Baekhyeon himself stops from coughing his lungs out out of courtesy, whilst Suho still braves a sneeze, relaxing immediately after, pleasance accenting his face.

Chanyeol has a slight bend at his knees, chest pushed forward. It is not exactly a fighting stance, but nothing too welcoming either. There are some fine wrinkles on his face, and they smooth out ever so slightly as Suho smiles at him, all warm and docile.

 It’s the third time they meet like this. Once - the collision, twice - the armistice.

“You’re mingling so much these days,” Chanyeol begins, eyes entirely on Baekhyeon. He’s meant to say this for a while. “Too much.” He’s thinking of Taeyeon. He’s had her on his motorcycle, watched her take walks on the beach with the blurry-faced boy. The snarl darkening his lips is caused by protectiveness.  

“I’m not breaking any of the stipulations, nor do I mean any harm,” Baekhyeon replies. She is loved in this family, it seems.

“She doesn’t tempt you?” Chanyeol spits out, not even a question, riled by Baekhyeon’s tone. Too business-like, distanced, to be used on _food_. Yixing comes to stand next to him, sparsely attired, and tenses at the tension Chanyeol is exuding.

The reek of the boy around them is faint. Baekhyeon doesn’t dwell on it.

“She doesn’t,” Baekhyeon states.

Chanyeol scoffs, a raunchy scorn. The fury is a little over the top; pure, a splattered wave of it. Yixing mirrors the sentiment, albeit weaker.

Suho is looking at him, an inquest, a nod. “No harm,” he repeats.

Chanyeol trusts Suho, and he himself dislikes that he ended up trusting a blood sucker. But he does, nonetheless, because so far Suho has proved to be _domesticated_ enough to be worthy of respect.  His right fist unclenches.

“What about the new sucker?”

It’s Suho’s time to smirk, somewhat pleased, a short sag to his shoulders before they straighten again. “Your boy ensured that he won’t step out of bounds.”

Pride in Chanyeol, a smirk too. “Did he?”

“You’ve seen the collateral damage,” Suho reminds. He did see the wreck of the scene. The fallen pine tree has just started to rot.

“No hard feelings then,” Chanyeol says. “Control the new sucker though; Jongin said he is a bold fellow.”

_Jongin._

“He’s daring, surely, but also old enough to be able to abide by a few little rules.” Suho is still smiling, fallen back into affability. “He’s part of our family now,” he continues, timbre hardening.  _Don’t mess with him_ , it conveys, not even a warning, but a promise.

With a hint of reluctance, Chanyeol accedes. Yixing has already turned back to the house.

Chanyeol’s eyes pass over Baekhyeon’s one last time, rigid. He has questions. Why would he be in Taeyeon’s proximity? Why would he allow her to get close? Why did he save her?

“Same reason a human would,” Baekhyeon responds, getting back in the car. It doesn’t wipe out Chanyeol’s suspicion, but it does Baekhyeon’s.

 

 

 

The sky is clear enough for the galaxies above to sprinkle their twinkles over them. Baekhyeon spares them a glance, gone worlds, before he comes back to the tumbler of blood in his hand. It is fuller than Sehun's, who has placed in the middle of his thigh. The rest of Sehun’s limbs dangle off different branches. There is something different about him, an assured slant to his body, his bearing. Maturescence that also brought along a heightened level of agitation. If Suho didn’t keep him away from human blood for so long, perchance he would be someone else entirely.

Baekhyeon goes a bit higher, draping himself over the highest branches, the last possible one that can support his weight. It’s a mere thirty metres above the soil, and Baekhyeon looks down, waiting to be afraid, to tremble a little, to feel the urge to fall. It doesn’t come. His eyebrow rises disinterestedly.

“Do you regret this yet?” Baekhyeon inquires. With his nail, he carves a little circle in the bark for his glass to sit.  

It is not too soon to ask. Sehun is not a kid anymore, not a fragile thing. Baekhyeon can’t see him anymore as the proof of Suho’s impatience, mistake, thirst, want. He’s not Suho’s cantante anymore. Five years is enough for stagnation to have settled in.

“Now I’m not alone,” Sehun says. Baekhyeon hears words being picked, dismissed, late nights entertained only by the glow of a computer, boring books about war and traumas, disapproving parents who insisted on overlong bouts of fasting. He lusted over love. “Being alone felt way worse than the transformation.”

Baekhyeon’s always been alone before, as he is now. He had no time to feel lonely, or to even desire the opposite.

“You’ve visited inferno and still deem loneliness worse,” he says, an echo, for maybe he could relate.

Sehun climbs higher too, a leg hooking with Baekhyeon’s as he settles on the adjacent branch. There are four millilitres of blood residing in the bottom of his tumbler. His eyes change colour, sangria in the centre around the pupil, and a bright gold around the edges. He hasn’t had a big enough amount of blood to completely change the shade.

Baekhyeon finally touches his own glass, downs it, then lets it fall through his fingers. It tumbles through full twigs until there is the thud of it piercing the ground under.

“Xiumin won’t be pleased that you did that,” Sehun says. He has a digit in his tumbler, scooping the coagulated blood over the rim and into his mouth. It is weird how the pinkness of his lips never dims out. It remains there, even after his death.

“You stole these from his beloved trinket cabinet, didn’t you?” Baekhyeon kind of accuses.

“He’s such an old lady,” Sehun says, and he drops his glass too. It stacks up on Baekhyeon’s, breaking it. The shards are kept together.

“Come dry my hair,” Baekhyeon says, jumping off. It feels like flying through the smell of young pine and woodlands, searching for an anchor.

“I’ll give you a perm,” Sehun whispers from still up in the tree, zings of mischief in the promise.

“You daren’t.”

Sehun’s laughter is so goofy. Baekhyeon hates himself for mirroring it. 

 

 

 

Baekhyeon always ditches history. He can’t stand the way the past is portrayed in the books - a pretty play on a shaky podium hoping for ovation. It wasn’t like that.

In lieu, he sits in a corner in the cafeteria playing on his phone. He only carries one around for such instances. It doesn’t even have a number.

When the break starts, Taeyeon sifts for him in the busy room. Baekhyeon waves.

Her walk is diffident, a shimmy to her shortened strides. Baekhyeon smiles at her all the same, colour rising into her cheeks at the sight. The backpack she puts on the table is plumper than usual. Her greeting is curt but heartfelt.

The core of her apple is thin, browned by the crests by the time she tosses it in the bin, half off the break later. When she reaches for her bag, Baekhyeon sees nervousness in her, in her movement, hesitance even.  She unzips it and heap of fabric spills out, teal, loosely knitted with thick, nappy thread.

She stretches it out with and bends over the table to wrap the scarf around Baekhyeon’s head and neck, until only his eyes remain uncovered. It wears the same scent her clothes have, something suave with a terse sting.

“Nobody likes freezing,” she says kindly, hiding an end under a loop, so the scarf doesn’t unravel. Taeyeon remembers their touch.

Baekhyeon is gazing at her, starched, unblinking.

It is romance, the inception of it, genuine, blooming inside of her as she takes in his visage. She thinks he’s  _cute._ She wants to _cuddle_ him _._

Baekhyeon is appalled, an old growl bubbling within and confined within the scarf. The beast is offended.

“I was enjoying it,” he says, still silent.

At the same time, he can’t help cherishing this gift, this intention.

“Lies.”

 

 

 

Dust sticks to his fingers as he presses the keys. Powdered time is pressed into the crevice between the notes, clogging their entrails.

The sound, however, is still crystalline, if not slightly out of tune, just from erosion. Baekhyeon can play his way around these minor glitches.

It’s a song that he used to sing with the personnel in that hell of a kitchen, hitting pans with spoons in a makeshift beat, the older helps chiming in with whispers, backing vocals. It’s a childish, merry phantasm. Baekhyeon breathes in, as deep as it can go, then he wings into a hymn of tending gardens and worshipping suns.

His voice lifts, dips, the edges of it prickling with a melodious hoarseness.

It dies out, the song, the meagre poetry of it, as the original did, when they got scolded or were too hungry to keep going. Baekhyeon would always be the last one to stop.

Per contra, now his fingers won’t still. They find their way into pieces of the classics, seamless transitions, crescendos and the wilting drag of dispersed vibrations, and Baekhyeon sways along, just like the creators did when on stage, lost in maladjustment.

All the keys are clean now, he observes. The dust clumping together and falling off the edge by his feet, swarming like ghastly ants. The final two notes, a Si bemolle and a do carry on, smoke in inert winds, and Baekhyeon follows it, still in a tiny waver to keep the sound alive and going. It is not insanity, what this makes him feel, but a good enough surrogate.

Through the growing silence, he grasps the fogged murmur of Suho bonding with Kyeongsu in his office, at last. Something that is inarticulate, but there is an accepting warmness to one another.

Then over this, over the brume, there is something paler, inscrutable, and Baekhyeon’s attention spins outside, at the polluted darkness spilling beyond the window - and from there, he is being watched. Someone has been looking at him during his entire repertoire.

It is a presence he cannot penetrate. An unknown figure, their focus spellbound on Baekhyeon. His perception is so vague, there is so little information he can sense, and all it does is gall.

His fingers touch the keyboard again. Baekhyeon starts playing. Spruce breaks, six keys and some ebony, and the night is over, but Baekhyeon’s melody isn’t.

 

 

 

“You always doll up for the tiny human,” Kyeongsu says. He’s lazing on top of a bookshelf, his front plastered to the ceiling.  

“She deserves me at my best,” Baekhyeon replies, passing by. Foreseeing what Kyeongsu will say is getting easier; now Baekhyeon knows some Latin.

He shuffles around the office, gathering the papers Suho had forgotten at home before leaving for his shift.

“What did she do to deserve you at all?” There is a frown to these words, but not on Kyeongsu’s face. Baekhyeon hits the bundle of files on the desk, to align all the edges. He does so a few times, blank.

“Being my friend,” Baekhyeon says, sincerely, surprising himself.

Kyeongsu snickers, dull and acerbic. “It’s food.”

“Not when I’m not hungry.”

A soft sigh escapes Kyeongsu, his expression placid. He believes Baekhyeon.

 

 

 

His palm encases around the elbow of an elderly woman, skin bunching up the grip, as she leans into him, disoriented.

“She’s ripped out her IV drip,” he informs the first passing nurse. She is young, with a cute button nose, and Baekhyeon pushes the old woman forward so she stops gazing at him and tends to the matter instead. The hallway is otherwise empty.

Baekhyeon walks out into the scant drizzle, looking at the desolated parking lot. “I just played philanthropist,” he says kiddingly to the building behind him. Suho hears and laughs a tiny titter, dazing the patient in front of him.

He remains there in the same place under the edge of the awning as the droplets fatten, crashing on the asphalt in a prattle. No one is waiting for him at home. He has no place to be.

Baekhyeon grimaces, rubbing his tongue over an elongated fang until it warms from the friction. It is lethargy, ennui, a gust that lays persistent on his shoulders, and Baekhyeon is too strong to come apart under it. Boredom offers him an ache, something to cherish, yet he still loathes it.

The forest is in full bloom, swarming with furry nippers. He could go for a run, for a hunt, for a swim in the lake at the top of the mountain.

Plum begins smearing over the horizon. Baekhyeon takes two steps forward into the warm rain when he catches the spindly pronunciation of his name, brittle from distance and from the fervid penchant Taeyeon has for the word. Little flashes of him follow, his smile especially, stretching in a partly rectangular shape, the brilliant set of teeth bared in the process. She thinks it is adorable. She covets to make him happy.

The resolution of her mind is unusually limpid. He’s gotten closer to her than he deems appropriate, formed a sturdier connection.

Baekhyeon’s bangs are already wet and sticking to his forehead. He spins on his heels and marches towards his car.

 

 

 

By the time he enters the peripheral district, he can already see through Taeyeon’s eyes. She is in a brightly lit bookstore, huddling in an armchair with a book that reeks of fresh ink. The font is a serif one, long-tailed. All Baekhyeon can decipher is that it is something written in first person.

In another aisle of the store, alone, she keeps testing his name on her tongue, sliding it between the pages she’s leafing through, whispers and whispers until she reaches the belletrist section and finds something she likes. Even before she checks out the book, she dreams of being cocooned for hours with the read.

Outside the store, Baekhyeon can pick up the difference in tonality, as if she is talking right in his ear. He sees and hears too loudly, the road ahead befogged by the visions. The swarm comes to a halt as she slows down. Her path has been familiar, but now the neighbourhood around her is foreign. She doesn’t walk back. Out of some kind of bravery, she picks an alley and walks along the dark length of it, for it seems to be angled in the direction of the main road.

“Human logic,” Baekhyeon sighs, changing lanes.

The maze she’s dived in is almost by the very outskirts of the city, unlit and littered with glass bottle shards. Baekhyeon is near, a few swerves away, when garbled mites of thoughts pick at the messy bedlam of Taeyeon’s. A bunch of drunk dudes, two nearly passed out, one brimming with suicidal thoughts, and another three cracking up at untold jokes.

They are under the streetlight Taeyeon will reach in a few strides once she takes the corner. They see her face.

It is nothing really explicit, but there is just the idea, the realization that they have power, that they can cause suffering. It’s viscid, putrid, and Baekhyeon does not hesitate to cross over a red light, especially when they start sharing allusions, graphic ones, punctuated by bouts of sordid guffaws. They concur the idea. They entertain it.

She steps wholly into their field of vision, the relief of finding people dissipating in a second once she takes in the burly men.  They feel  _excitement._ Fucking excitement, and Baekhyeon’s foot is flooring the pedal. Her fear washes over him. She thinks her legs will give out on her if she starts running now. She’ll be caught in no time.

Just a curb, a few seconds and Baekhyeon is there, in front of her. Baekhyeon’s stature is not imposing, but there is nothing soft about him, nothing that deems him feeble. It takes too long for them to scamper back, being they are inebriated, courageous enough to still consider pushing him aside and go for her anyway.

For a moment, he is ashamed. He has that urge too, to damage, to break them into pieces just because he  _can_ , because it would be  _so_  easy. They would not even be able to comprehend how they’re not alive anymore. If he’s quick enough, Taeyeon would not see a thing, and it would seem as if they dropped struck by sudden lightning.  

It’s her cold hand creeping up his arm that makes him stop thinking about murder. He keeps his mouth tight, his canines protruding beyond normal under his lips. He moves his arm gently, a nudge, and walks her to the passenger seat.

He could also run them over with the car. He wouldn’t be caught with this either.

Then a small clatter of teeth resonates to his right, and Baekhyeon looks over to see her fingers intertwined in her lap, her thighs quivering as she tries to calm down.

Baekhyeon steers back out on the main road, as fast as possible. “Your seatbelt,” he says once he gauges she isn’t going into shock. Her reaction is prompt.

She doesn’t know what they were thinking. Baekhyeon is glad. She is better off without even suspecting it.

 He turns the heat on. It’s completely dark now. Her fear ebbs, the mild fluster of being in his presence taking its place.

“You have great timing,” she comments.

“Why, thank you,” Baekhyeon replies.

 

 

 

“I’m such a hero,” Baekhyeon booms as he enters the villa. “Do we have any capes lying around?”

“I might have a cloak,” says Xiumin, lowering the newspaper in his hand. It’s from 1832, Beijing.

“That won’t do,” Baekhyeon clucks.

Xiumin shrugs a tiny shrug, simpering tepidly. 

 

 

 

In one of his notebooks, Baekhyeon spells out  _Jongin_  with clean blue ink. He pronounces it too, a most melodious tumble of two syllables.

It still feels like he is dreaming some nights as he lays still on the carpet, as his mind projects on the ceiling that name being called for different purposes. With urgency, with tenderness, with anger. The figments of who he is - golden fur; vast, stupidly confident eyes.

It is staggering after being the onlooker of so many thoughts, so many stories, to finally have some of his own, strong enough to overpower the surrounding ones.

 

 

 

Sunday afternoon, Baekhyeon puts makeup on Sehun. He goes a bit overboard - peachy shadow on his cheeks, smog lining his eyelashes.

Baekhyeon giggles, sneaky, along with Xiumin, who ends up dabbing a highlight in the centre of his lips.

“Heard it gives the illusion of volume,” he says. From near the door, Kyeongsu snorts, and Baekhyeon notices right then just how much Xiumin is endeared by the sound.

“I’m not 2D,” Sehun mutters, trying to steal a few glances at himself on every shiny surface in sight. Cheating.

“You aren’t  _very_  3D either,” Kyeongsu argues. “Your face is so flat.”

“It’s called a bitch face,” Sehun spits out. “And now it’s pretty.”

“It’s always been. You’re still not going anywhere,” Baekhyeon says. Someday soon he will. He will step back into the world he just left. But not now.

 

 

 

The curtains tremble from the slight breeze, dispersed rays of yellow pouring from the wide open window. It is warm enough now.

Strangely, Taeyeon is not asleep yet.

Baekhyeon doesn’t wait, nor does he go back, but he climbs up the lattice, starting to huff as he peeks his head over the sill. She is on her belly; head on the other side of the bed and socked feet climbing up the wall, chin in her hands as she hunches over the book.

He raps his knuckles on the wood to alert of his presence. “May I come in?” he croons, hushed.

 She startles, elbows running away from under her as she face plants into the book with a thump.

“You’re really good at making my heart stop,” she says, half of it in the paper. Taeyeon faces him with a blush and a pursed smile. She’s put more meaning into these words than she intended.

“I’m a professional heart-stopper,” he says, also meaning it in more ways than one. He leaps over the sill with momentum and hitting his shin on the breadth of it. A prop - clumsiness. Baekhyeon wheezes for a few more seconds, stepping deeper into the room.

She rises, legs folded under herself, meeting his eyes upfront.

Then Baekhyeon is hit with the smell, gagging with it from the inmost breath he takes. It is all over her chest, her hair, the thinness of her neck. It draws stronger down, from the loose hoodie she’s submerged in, zip undone. It dangles off her shoulders, worn, discoloured and fuzzy along the seams.

The rest of the room too. The tiny stuffed animals lining the shelf near the door. The clothes thrown on the desk chair.

Jongin’s been here, for quite long. He left her his hoodie and gave her a tight hug before leaving.

Baekhyeon rubs his hands together. There are no red lines on his palms from the lattice he just climbed, but there is rust residue.

She drags herself to the opposite corner of the bed, knocking the book down to the floor. She gathers all the covers and pillows under her back, making room for him.

Baekhyeon slowly sits, for a moment forgetting to let his weight on it. Then the mattress sinks.  “So far, you’re a great host,” he says with a slack smile, maybe in too much of a whispered tone, for she finds it sexy, her mouth parting a sliver.  

“You’re a great impromptu visitor yourself,” she replies, stretching the clothes on her to screen her slight state of undress. 

Her eyes are rimmed pink. She’s reached page 232 and has read all the way there in one go. It is from tiredness that she doesn’t question his arrival, rather indulging in it instead, being in a kind of dopey happiness.

“You disappeared after lunch,” he begins, to bait some explications.

“Had to help my friend with some homework,” she says. “I don’t even know physics, but he needs all the help he could get. That dork.”

Baekhyeon is given how she perceives the warmth of him, the jokes, the frustration. Nothing crisp, nothing to offer the briefest amount of relief to his pining.

She shifts under his scrutiny as she scrambles for a cushion from the mountain she is resting against, bringing into her lap. The duvet is saturated with the fragrance, the cushion too.

He doesn’t even notice that he is sliding closer to her, allured, mindless, nose high in search for more of the scent, already so intense that it feels like syrup spilling down his throat. “You suck at physics,” he soughs in her space, his palm landing in the gap between her knees. Her lips split, a short breath escaping. It is the heady tint of human combining with the want within him the one blighting his withholding, and before he decides against it, his lips are hovering above hers, sucking in sappy moisture. She springs from surprise, her cupid’s bow making contact with the peak of his bottom lip, and Baekhyeon  _sees_ , crystal clear for that fraction of a moment, the thoughts of him swarming beyond the strata of her mind.

It is all gone once the touch is broken.  

Baekhyeon charges forward, seizing her mouth in an insatiate kiss, a hand over her nape, the other one bringing the hood over her head, for the flavour in it to seep into his probing tongue, indulgent. The representations are rich, bountiful- Jongin smiling, dimples on his cheeks; Jongin laughing, ivories bared, lovely peals; Jongin, shirtless and taut, chasing after her in the sand; the timbre of his voice as he retorts to her chiding, the pout he has on the timidity of his lips as he focuses on his studies; Jongin tearing up from a tiny cut on his thumb. 

It is intoxicating, and Baekhyeon ends up straddling her, caging her beneath him, lips demanding, and maybe too fast, too inhumane, as he pries the wetness of her tongue into his mouth, the hotness of her body into his skin. Baekhyeon still  _wants_  like he’s never wanted before.

She presses up into him, slower, overwhelmed, her arm winding around his waist. She seeks to  _warm_  him, of all things, as she nips at his lips. Then she gets daring, her tongue passing over his and into his mouth, the veins under her tongue hooking over his lower teeth, the sheer membrane over them ripping slightly. Baekhyeon angles his head, nose in her hair for one last sip - Jongin eating, greasy lips stretched into a contented grin - then he pulls away, fangs retracting.

He forgoes panting until his head clears, and when it does, he notices hers, and does too.

The exposed skin above her waistband glistens in the lamp light, and it changes colour before Baekhyeon’s very eyes, into finger shaped strokes. But her mouth is still open, eyes lidded heavily, body limp in the covers, and there is a faint tang of arousal to her.

“I’m sorry,” Baekhyeon says, and he has to swallow, to clear the spit curds in his pharynx.  Cicadas are roaring outside. “Didn’t mean to paint you.”

Her hands – trembling - come to tug down her blouse, covering the darkening bruise. She doesn’t feel any pain yet, the pounding of her heart still deafening. “It’s nothing,” she says, lifting herself against the headboard.

She is satisfied, something she tried not to wish for having come true. The flush of her skin is pretty, vessels dilated, lips puffy.

This is not what Baekhyeon intended to create. This is not the person he yearns to have.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, stepping over the window.

 

 

 

He falls into the seat in front of Suho’s desk. The bleached glow of the computer skin drapes on his cheeks. There is repletion, high on the mounds, the softened edges of his poise, compared to seventy years ago when Suho had been a wreck of a man, alone and plagued by guilt, exactly like Baekhyeon, and they decided to just stick together. He has a job now, knowledge, control over himself, a family, a purpose, and Sehun.

“Are you becoming a workaholic?” Baekhyeon asks, and Suho lets out a titter, a jolly little puff.  

“I don’t know yet. I’ll have to conduct some tests.”

He has not fed in so long, his eyes are almost black, and the shine of his skin is gone too. He looks so human like this. A contented one at least.

“Spotted a cougar on my way here,” Baekhyeon says. His foot glides over Suho’s shin, all the way to the knee, an attempt at some sort of seduction.

“A cougar,” he repeats. He doesn’t move away from the touch, and one of his eyebrows twitches up. He finally looks at Baekhyeon.

Cougars are his favourite.

 

 

 

Suho’s hunting style is the epitome of grace. Swift and gentle. Baekhyeon never gets tired of watching him.

The cougar has a few scars along its flank, patches where the skin under its fur is uneven and pale. Suho kills it with a short movement, his palm held vertical, a snap of his forearm over the cervical column, and the animal is internally decapitated, already dead as it collapses to the ground. Suho kneels by it for a few brief moments, piercing the flesh with his fangs in multiple places. He hurls the drained kill over his shoulder, leaving it in the range of a clan of bears.

“So glad you look dead again. You looked too mortal before,” Baekhyeon praises once Suho is next to him. His shirt is still pristine, white, collar firm. He is smiling, teeth clean too, pristine, white. No pink tint. “Now let me run you down so you don’t end up demolishing Sehun when you fuck him.”

Suho sputters, dismayed, but with no intent to deny. He is already left behind, Baekhyeon ahead of him over a few abrupt hills. There is a row of yellow, worn rocks at the base of the nearby mountain. Baekhyeon likes jumping from terrace to terrace.

“That was a nice promenade,” he says, clambering to the top about an hour later.

“It’s good for digestion.” Suho replies, sitting by, thigh next to thigh. They are the same length. Baekhyeon laughs. Dad jokes, Sehun calles these.

He hooks their feet together and begins dangling them.

They listen to a few recitals by diurnal birds. Suho thinks these creatures are ugly, for they are roamers of blackness - warts around their eyes and wings haphazardly feathered.

“Their song is beautiful though,” Baekhyeon says. Most likely, it is a squabble between them, but that fury sounds good, nevertheless.

“What is your concern?” Suho asks once the recital ends. Their legs still for a second, then they go back to a more careful sway.

“I injured Taeyeon,” Baekhyeon says. Even now, all he feels regarding that is dissatisfaction - the thirst flaring within him outshines the remorse. “Her hipbone.”  

“Where?”

“The middle of the left iliac crest. I did stop at the first fibre cracking, but maybe it was too late.”

 _Why._ He doesn’t say it.

His unease lies beyond the damage in itself, rather curious as to how Baekhyeon ended up hurting her in the first place. He has an inkling, one he can relate too much to.  Baekhyeon crossed a line, ventured, and as much as he dislikes it, to him, Sehun happened. So he can’t say anything. He can’t scold Baekhyeon for it, not when he’s faulty of the same thing.

But for Baekhyeon, it is not Taeyeon that he wants. His actual justification is laughable, worthy of reprimand. Baekhyeon prepares to ask for it. Ask Suho to scold him because he’s been intimate with a human in order to extract information about someone else.

“Be nice to her. Hips take a while to heal. Unless the ilium cracked all the way to the base.”

“It didn’t.”

“She’s still wearing your bruises. Be nice to her.”

Then silence, and the crashing roar of a still heart. Baekhyeon knows it is from his own, and not from the calm steadiness of Suho's.

 

 

 

Kyeongsu keeps greeting him every morning.

“Hello, my saviour.” A smile, an enigma on his face.  This time he finds Kyeongsu in the kitchen, something sizzling in a pan. Baekhyeon catches the odour of freshly cut green onion leaves. It has a sting that goes up his nostrils, like the alcohol in the perfume Suho spritzes himself with so he smells of s _omething_  instead of nothing.

That knife in his hand has a wide blade, new. The cutting board unpolished, a plank of old oak edged in thick husk. He’s moving fast, without following any recipe.

“I really liked these,” Sehun mutters, eyes on a little plate filled with tiny pancakes, edges crunchy. A circle of green is in the centre of each one. Slices of hot pepper perhaps.

Baekhyeon turns to him. “You’re salivating.”

“I don’t mean to,” he says, and his nose wrinkles, swallowing the pooling of venom. He has no intention of tasting them. He meanders back to his room, but he recalls how he used to make them for himself, out of sparse ingredients he found around the house.

“Reduce that soy sauce,” Baekhyeon says. “Not too thick.” Sehun did that for his own.  

Kyeongsu smiles, a different one, and Baekhyeon is hit again with his winsome ambiguity.

“Sure.”

Before long, he has a few small containers stacked on top of each other, packed in a pillowed case. “I think she will like it,” he says, pushing it to the edge of the counter.

Baekhyeon assesses the offering, assesses Kyeongsu, and Baekhyeon is mad at himself for even searching for a reason to doubt Kyeongsu’s intentions. He’s unsettlingly seasoned. It doesn’t suffice.

“Thank you,” he says, smiling.

“Oh, so it was for you,” Sehun blasts after him, head peeking over the doorframe. “What have you fucked up? Is it biiiig?”

“Colossal,” Baekhyeon deadpans from the garage.

 

 

 

Taeyeon is astounded, shimmying a bit in her seat out pure glee. 

The feeling instils in Baekhyeon as well, showing duly on his face as he pushes the package closer towards her. Watching her eat is captivating. Handling chopsticks, distinct chewing patterns for differently textured foods, different amount of spittle for different levels of consistency. The boxes contain grains and greens and meats. They are such innocent things. Things that do not take away anyone’s future.

But the sensation they give is meek. No human finds mind-blowing pleasure in feeding on these, not like his kin finds in blood.

Her affection grows swallow by swallow. A catalyst, an addendum. She shifts her weight side-to-side, subtly striving to get the waistband of her jeans to dig into the bruises Baekhyeon left on her, in the weakened bone. The ache feels rewarding. Turns her on a little.

“That was one delicious apology,” she says, wiping her mouth.

She stops herself before wishing for him to have another reason to be sorry for. From wishing his lips on hers again.

 

 

 

The door of her house closes behind her. Baekhyeon twists the steering wheel just a few degrees, moves just a few centimetres, when the cry of an overexerted engine flies past him. From inside, Taeyeon’s father curses at the noise.  

Baekhyeon observes the speeding motorcycle. It is dirty, white mud splattered all over it. Sand in the crannies. Sand. _The beach_.

It beckons him. Baekhyeon doesn’t resist.

His car catches up soon, but he doesn’t let them be parallel next to one another. From this distance, his perception is already inhibited. His vision loses colour.

It brings him a specific kind of serenity, and he just  _knows_ who he is after. Emboldened, he goes faster, closer, and becomes deaf too. The motorcycle rounds him, keeping ahead at a steady pace.

It is semblant to a stroll, leisurely, in a taciturn company, pretty scenery spilling around them as they rush on unlevelled asphalt. Oddly, the sky is clean of any grey. Washy blue and fanned, thin clouds. Baekhyeon lets his arm out the window to be brushed by the sunlight. The skin gleams, shine trapped in the translucent layers of his stale dermis. As though he is precious, something to be collected, or exploited - polished and spread out in a glass case. Else, he could play an advertisement panel, tacky, gathering frustrated clientele.  

He remains obedient to the route drawn by the figure in front of him. It comes to a stop at the side of the road. On the right spans an open field, bestrewn in tender greens.  On the other side, the woods climb sharply. Further up, it will culminate in the platform of a canyon. They’ve travelled quite far.

Baekhyeon brakes his car behind the motorcycle. 

Jongin dismounts, a neat throw of a long leg over the body of the vehicle. His back is to Baekhyeon as he takes the helmet off, hair lifting in the breeze.

Baekhyeon braces himself, fingers gathering in a fist, for when Jongin will face him. He considers closing his eyes to suppress the tremors starting to scamper up his spine.

It is too late for that. Jongin’s eyes arrest his, steeled. Swiftly, he nods to the side, to the woods he traipses towards until he can’t be seen anymore.

Baekhyeon collapses in the chair, motionless, and he realizes that he has already forgotten how he looks. Lean constitution, lush lips, clean cut jaw, bronze skin over it - all lost. He only recalls that he is stunning, a beauty to mar.

Out of the car, his enticing scent has been brushed away by the wind. He still luxuriates in the remnants stirring with vegetation. It brings him  _joy_ , unadulterated, novel, and now he is about ready to go have some more.

The trees are different here, older and more fragile, fat roots webbing out of the soil. He runs until the forest disperses, cancelled by the cusp of the cliff.  

“You hurt her,” Jongin says into the open space before him. His tone is tolerant.

Baekhyeon gazes at him. His hair is dark until it catches the mottled rays, then it turns a rose gold, radiant. The sound of rushing water whirs in the background. Underneath Jongin’s peregrine incense, the air is fragrant with moss.

“I did,” Baekhyeon admits. They are set apart by a distance similar to the width of the border. Baekhyeon looks down. No flowers at his feet.  A legion of red insects instead. “I wasn’t expecting it either.”

Jongin addresses him with a scoffing look, slightly verging on puzzlement. It is a change for the better, perhaps, less animus contouring his stance. A highlight nestles in the valley of his philtrum. His mouth coils - his lips gloss with viscous saliva.

He is so painfully young, Baekhyeon discovers. Vernal skin, the lustre of excessive sebum over it, a crowd of tiny whiteheads residing across his dimpled chin, redder counterparts fading by the edge of his temple. Twitchiness seems to be coursing through the hard panes of his muscles, swelling constantly, the fine lines showing through his thin clothing. His body grew before he did.

Baekhyeon imagines what the vibe of his mind would be. Something peaceful, warm, kind of silly, imposing. If only he had any means of finding out. He’ll have to rely on facial cues now; a practice he got unused to.

“But why?” Sternness tumbles over the cracks of his voice.

 _Because of you_ , Baekhyeon muses saying. It would be blunt and it would be true. But between them is a game that has been spuming, building up for a while. Putting a stop to it at this point would be a waste.

“Because I could.” Perhaps, Baekhyeon meant to continue the sentence, to cushion it, but he now has a wet jaw and set of teeth around his neck, paws over his lower stomach, the wolf on top of him, a minatory howl transferring into Baekhyeon’s carcass. He actually feels his skin succumbing, holing under claws, cilia pulled apart until the greyed pink of his flesh is exposed. The cracks of his thorax, ribs rattling in their hinges.

He’s so strong, and Baekhyeon is helpless, so accepting of that helplessness until he loops his fingers around Jongin’s neck. It is thick, windpipe shielded by tense tissues. The fur is soft, as soft as he pictured it to be. He squeezes until the wolf quiets.

Jongin doesn’t gasp for air. Baekhyeon knows that if he wants to, Jongin could rip his whole arm off in a blink. But he doesn’t. His paw climbs up Baekhyeon’s body to his shoulder, where it presses Baekhyeon’s neck further into his opened mandible.

Baekhyeon wants to laugh. He feels  _pain_. A bygone treat that lights up shut down functions, and it is terrific. Baekhyeon rages for more, suffocating Jongin until he thrashes, the absolute tranquillity that comes from being under Jongin rending away.

Jongin keeps pouncing on him, merciless, throwing Baekhyeon on the ground and picking him up, his clothes shredding under his strikes, taking skin along, leaving him almost naked, but still standing.

It is nearly playful at some point, as they roll around and around, just about over the margin and into the frothing abyss under. Baekhyeon’s fringe is shorn by the tips of Jongin’s claws as he aims for a blow that Baekhyeon dodges, the clippings falling over his face. His back is bent over the brim; the waves seem to be calling for him. It doesn’t feel like oncoming death, but like aliveness, like protest, and Baekhyeon will survive the fall and come searching for more.  

Then Jongin is already rolling them back into the shadow of the forest, hitches to his breaths. He is injured too, bruises and pulled tendons, his left tibia fractured.

A delicate scratch erupts as he shifts his head, and blood begins weeping in globules from the gash. Baekhyeon stalls, maddened, and Jongin just  _keeps_  moving, keeps trying to immobilize him, and then there is even more blood coming out.

“Jongin,” Baekhyeon manages to croak with the last sip of oxygen he finds in his lungs. His hand comes to rest in the vicinity of the wound, gentle, a petting motion to make Jongin still. He frees his other hand and slaps a fistful of mud over his mouth and nose. The stink of mouldy leaves barely distils the ravishing aroma of Jongin’s blood, even as it clogs his nostrils.

Jongin freezes at the calling of his name, eyes questing for Baekhyeon’s. He turns his face away, opposing the direction of the wind. Then he is blanketed by the expanse of a naked, burning boy, and Baekhyeon sees the ripped skin, edges flaked, pigmentation bloated around them. He is panting, and there are hitches from whenever he breathes in too deeply, and the injury has to stretch over the bones.

As he changed, Baekhyeon’s thumb fell alongside the oozing lesion, right under his jaw, the rest of his palm cupping around Jongin’s nape. He feels it wetting, pooling, hot and thick as it spills over the digit. Jongin’s heartbeat is chaotic, whacking inside him.

Baekhyeon finds himself clinging, bringing Jongin down into himself, holding close, and it is so warm and it smells so inviting. Baekhyeon  _wants,_ an encompassing lust that wrecks him to the very core. Brazen, he presses himself closer, face dirty, and noses into the wound he inflicted, whilst hoisting Jongin in his lap, bare thighs binding his torso.

“Don’t you dare,” Jongin whispers. Through his own tremors, Baekhyeon can pick up the bewilderment. Baekhyeon is not supposed to want him. He is supposed to be repulsed, indifferent. This is the dynamic their biology dictates.

Yet Baekhyeon has his hands pressing into his back, bringing them chest to chest whilst he nuzzles in the juncture between his shoulder and his neck, around the crux of his thirst. He is mostly divested, pants in tatters. There is so much skin contact.

“Just a taste,” Baekhyeon pleads, spitting out the dirt in his mouth. He can stop. He _will_.

Jongin pushes him off enough so that his eyes can bore into Baekhyeon’s. His brows are furrowed, lips fused. Baekhyeon wants to suck on them too, tug and savour, but later, when he’ll have earned enough affection to deserve that.

From the wound, a trickle slides down the column of his throat to his collarbone. In the sepia cast by the lowering sun, it gleams purple.

Baekhyeon’s mouth is on the trail in an instant, after Jongin keeps still for too long, not getting any tenser in his hold. He laps at that minuscule dribble, a dragged little bead, and it’s so fucking good that Baekhyeon feels like falling into a fervid void, shattering in pleasure. Liquid pyre sparks on his tongue, spreading and eating away at his mucosa. This too offers a kind of pain, one that it soothes at the same time. Baekhyeon is deranged from the sensation.

Jongin relaxes over him a fraction, and when Baekhyeon’s tongue darts over the actual laceration, lathering his spit over it, Jongin jerks, his hips canting forward into Baekhyeon, once, then the taste is ripped away from him, and he is being thrown off by a wheezing Jongin.

He settles his back on the opposite tree trunk, slumped, his body battered, eyes wide.

As Baekhyeon comes back down to coherency, he mirrors the stance.

Alarmed, straining against desire.

 

 

 

The date stamped on the bag – today. He feels it through the plastic, how the blood is not even completely cool. Baekhyeon fiddles with it hurriedly, eagerly. The plasma is fresh too.  

He empties both packets into the first glass he finds.

Along his rib, he thought it was a scrap of his jacket that kept tickling him, but it is just a ribbon of his skin. The edges of the cut are clean, trim. There was no hesitance to Jongin’s swings. Baekhyeon licks his thumb and spreads the wetness on the lapel, then he plasters it back on. At the very least, it will stop irritating him.

“I’ll prepare a bath,” Suho addresses him from his bedroom.

“Make it hot,” Baekhyeon says. He feels cold. Too cold.

In his wake, crumbs of gunk litter the floor as he climbs upstairs, one hand on the balustrade for support, and the other holding the glass. He settles it on the edge of the bathtub.

Baekhyeon plucks the remaining scraps of his clothes off himself, and he steps into the pouring water. It immediately pigments an ashen, grainy merlot, threads curling from his chasmal wounds. Smoke escapes from the blaze of his chest.

Suho enters holding a stack of towels in his arms.  

Baekhyeon heeds back to his glass, carelessly.  He breaks off a part of the rim. The piece collapses into the liquid with a brief splatter. It wouldn’t be the first time he ate glass.

“When did this happen?” Suho asks, and Baekhyeon looks at him. His makeup is still on. That’s why the blood is so fresh.

“An hour ago.” Baekhyeon takes a few sips. After Jongin, this is terribly underwhelming.

He twists. The tub is almost full, and the intensity of the colour dilutes bit by bit, until he’s submerged in pink.

“You’re still open,” Suho says. He sits on the edge of the tub and dips a hand into the water. It is the hottest it can possibly be. The raising steam is thick. “Hurry with that,” he gestures to the glass. Overwarm blood tastes awful.

Baekhyeon downs it, the hefty volume expanding his stomach. The shard of glass is gone, now stuck somewhere inside him. He might not be able to throw it up, and it will remain among the other such artefacts that he’s been collecting for years.

Suho studies the sorry state of Baekhyeon’s body. Discomfiture shows on this face, barely-there folds that hide the turmoil underneath. He’s never seen a truly battered vampire, one which may potentially require medical attention. Only if they were exceptionally weak, at least a decade of not having fed at all. But Baekhyeon has—

“Don’t bring me more,” Baekhyeon says, letting the empty glass capsize. “I feel inebriated.” He sinks further, immersing himself completely. The ripples of water bring out some of the mud that ended up stuck in his nasal cavity. A fever steeps inside his marrow. It seems to go deeper, to a place Baekhyeon never knew could maim him.

“Where’s Sehun?”  he wonders, just his mouth resurfacing. He can’t see Suho through the curtain of vapours and the slurry over his eyes. The moon is weak tonight.

A moment. “Contriving a natural disaster with Xiu," Baekhyeon answers for himself. The inside of his mouth feels raw, as if it has been eaten by moths, rotten. Speaking abets its progress, gnawing the walls.

Baekhyeon enjoys the flames of the water as it infiltrates into the cuts. Pain brings him afloat. 

The jingle of Suho’s rumination leaks through Baekhyeon’s elation. What kind of analgesic would work. If he even owns a needle strong enough to pierce stitches into his skin.

“I have found my singer,” Baekhyeon marvels, discloses. Tipsy, he rises. His nose is clean now.

“Did you kill them?” Suho asks, prompt with dread. There is no amount of willpower that can keep leeches like them away from their melodists.  

“Our enemy is pretty hard to kill,” Baekhyeon replies. A beam makes its way to his lips, unyielding.

Suho notices just now how the fetor he’s been wearing dispels through condensation. Baekhyeon loves it. A musk, opiate, like to dried pomegranate. It was a fruit meant for the gods in his time. His mouth waters. Perhaps his heart cedes a faint throb.

“A wolf,” Suho says, still with stupefaction even though he knows there is nothing else that could ever harm a vampire to this degree. Baekhyeon just watches the ripples of water near the edge of the tub. It’ll overflow if Baekhyeon moves too much.

“A sublime one,” Baekhyeon summons. Memories of him are gauzy, already, but his beauty isn’t.

“Deus meus,” Suho thinks, mutters, at a loss.

Baekhyeon grins at the little outburst. “He made me so weak.” He stretches his leg. Easily, it pops out of his hip socket. “Pain is wonderful.” It takes a few tries to get it back in.

Suho ganders at him with apprehension, but he sees too, the unprecedented radiance surrounding Baekhyeon despite how shredded he is. A smile sketches on his face, tiny, sincere. Without another word, he leaves Baekhyeon alone.

The water keeps cooling. Absently, he notes the kindling thrumming throughout his body, his cock stiffened between his thighs. He hasn’t been in this state, in lust, in over a century. He has no inclination to quench it.

Baekhyeon lets himself simmer into it. He is still mid-chase. It will build up to the inevitable anyway.

When both he and the water reach room temperature, he gets up, stepping onto the towels. Looking in the mirror, his eyes have never been this colour.

 

 

 

Kyeongsu greets him with a hug in the morning, just as he descends into the foyer. His arms are delicate as they rest on Baekhyeon’s back, going up and down. There was never any clear rancour coming from Kyeongsu, but barely now Baekhyeon truly believes him, revelling in the gifted comfort.

Then something is being whispered in his ear, Kyeongsu on his tip toes, to make sure no one else hears him. “Let it consume you.”

Baekhyeon is allowed to intrude, just a few arches of memories, and he sees Kyeongsu in the embrace of something, someone furry. Attachment, and the fierce beacons of adulation.

He removes himself from Kyeongsu’s cradle. His hold isn’t gentle enough, and it irks the lazily healing casualties peppered all over his body.

Behind him, Kyeongsu chuckles. He knows what pleasure Baekhyeon derives from this incident.

 

 

 

“I hope you’ll be more careful and not fall down the stairs again,” Suho says softly, lowering the X-ray sheet in his hand.

He begins signing up a prescription of a few ointments and painkillers. The surface of the bone is just the slightest bit split. It will patch up on its own.

Taeyeon makes to stammer something, her feet kicking under her from her perch on the consultation bed. Baekhyeon subtly touches her shoulder, sending her a nod, pretending to have lied in order to hide the real reason of her injury. She smirks, playing along, ridding him of possible embarrassment.

“I’ll do my best, sir,” she says, hopping off. She leaves with a tiny smile, papers in hand.

“Thank you, father,” mocks Baekhyeon, turning to him from the closed door. His words don’t brim with satire anymore - the amount has lessened.

“You’re finally accepting Sehun as your mom now?” Suho inquires, signing a bunch of documents. Thirty-three signatures in five seconds, Baekhyeon counts.

“Oh, no, he is just your filthy mistress.”

The grimy office echoes Suho’s fine giggles.

 

 

 

On the opposite bank, lightning ramifies, draining into the wobbling herbage. It is dark enough for the flare of lambency to startle the lowering dusk. The wind strengthens, its tides braiding. Baekhyeon’s clothes rustle along, quiet in comparison to the havoc of the river below.

When Jongin fought him here, it had been calm, sunny. Woe seems to suit it better.

Baekhyeon’s shins sway off the cliff. The stone under him is fissured, brittle, ripe to break off. He hasn’t had a free fall in a while. He likes the negligent cress of air around his form, easy, lenient.   

His heel makes contact with the stone, hard, and it partially capitulates under his mass. If it happens once more, he will be plummeting into naught along with the rubble.

He is about to jump when he is stopped by the sound of movement. Feet dragging across pebbled ground.

Baekhyeon looks to his left in time to see Jongin bypassing a thorny bush, coming fully into view afterwards. He’s not surprised to see Baekhyeon there - his strides don’t halt for a second.

He’s wearing just a pair of black jeans, waned and tarred by the knees. He has no shirt on. He must be buying so many clothes; the strips of the ones he’s had on last time are still strewn over the trees.

The trail of hair running from his navel and down into his waistband is slim, crisp.

“Will you come after me with a lighter?” Baekhyeon asks, reining himself from cowering whilst Jongin’s redolence assaults him. “If I jump?”

Killing a vampire requires pulling _it_ apart and setting it on fire. It has to be this combo.

If he jumps, and if he allows himself to, he will splinter into pieces through the rocks under, then be taken by the waves. He might still have enough strength in him to sew himself back together. That will take a few years.

He looks expectantly at Jongin. Baekhyeon observes how his pose is slightly askew, mindful. He is not healing very well either; infection gathered warmth around the fissures. It is his fault. It is his venom forestalling Jongin’s repair, and it won’t speed up until it is all metabolized. 

“I think I’ll just die too,” he says with a noncommittal raise to his eyebrows followed by a shrug.  His  _voice_. “And I don’t even have a lighter.”

“You could’ve killed me if only you were a smoker.”

“That’s a shitty trade-off.” Jongin sights him flatly.

Baekhyeon simpers, accompanying it with mirthful huff. A hint of a smile graces the ends of Jongin’s lips as well.

It is curious how they both came here, as if they set up to meet. Friends that don’t need communication. Allied arch nemeses. Baekhyeon admits to himself that he longs for Jongin, having exhausted his ability to remember anything about him. Not because of thirst. Not because of anything else.

Jongin inches closer, guiding himself into a sitting position. Baekhyeon huddles towards him to at least take a thigh off the unsteady stone. A few threads of grass stand proudly between his and Jongin’s hand.

A resolute jolt of thunder infracts through the clouds, its debris sprinkling over the course of a few blinks.

Perhaps, it has passed a longer while than he thought; him just being next to Jongin, sedent, restraining himself from attempting to burglarize Jongin’s mind. He can’t read, can’t see, can’t _feel_ a thing. It is completely sealed, immune to Baekhyeon’s gift. It’s as if Jongin’s not even here.

His mouth is opening into a soft hum as the storm falls into recess. It’s not a song, but a poorly articulated lisle of what the nannies used to sing to rented children. Then it mixes with one of the things he seldom catches Sehun bobbing his head to - shrill, catchy rasps. His pitch climbs higher, to eclipse the riling quiescence that comes from Jongin. He tunes it with the crackle of the leaves.

Jongin’s reaction is minimal. He doesn’t tense, doesn’t cringe, the knobs of his back prominent through his tee as he slouches, lax. Baekhyeon’s voice doesn’t disturb him, not as much as it disturbs Baekhyeon, being that he has to take in a bountiful inhale each time to keep the note. He masks it with a hiccup, swallowing the load of wonderfulness, of Jongin, contained within the air.

 The water below froths into high waves. The sky cracks further away. It doesn’t start to rain, instead the laden clouds glide away, leaving clean light behind. Baekhyeon doesn’t even know when he’d stopped singing, when the sound drained out from him.

“There is nothing really special about you,” he says, provisional. Again, the impetus to douse the muteness. This kind of asphyxia is out of his dominion of comfort. “No beautiful mind, no outstanding wisdom,” he recites.

 _So why am I here, why do I care about you, who_ are _you even?_  Baekhyeon has no means of finding out whether Jongin caught the inferred meaning or not. It is unnerving.

Jongin’s shin stretches next to his. Baekhyeon’s sight hazes out the ferment of the abyss and sees just the pretty bow of Jongin’s shoelaces.

“You can’t read me,” Jongin says, utterance swept into the current. It’s overrun with conviction, a smidgen of slyness. “How do you know it’s not beautiful?”

It is so bland and obvious, and Baekhyeon is caught with his own dumb statement. All of a sudden, he laughs, unbridled, spasming as his nostrils flare, avid for Jongin.

“I’m a shape-shifter too. Is that not special enough?”

He’s arguing, picking apart Baekhyeon’s demurral. He has no reason not to like him. And Baekhyeon would like to ask, would like to cut the chase and say ‘Have you imprinted on me?’

But if the response to that is negative, their fate ends here. Baekhyeon doesn’t risk it.

“Plentifully special then,” Baekhyeon agrees.

He slides on entirely steady ground, part of the rock crumbling down. Jongin’s body heat washes relief over his wounds, and he hopes his coldness caresses Jongin’s. He’s never felt anyone quite as warm, as lulling, as beautiful.

Jongin doesn’t move away.

 

 

 

The books in the library smell of pheromones and other pubescent secretions. Baekhyeon primes his face into blankness and opens one of such textbooks to check the syllabus for the finals. Yet again.

A fountain pen twirls in his hand, from finger to finger and back, measured, a small circus show. He’s seated awkwardly in his chair to shield his broken ribs, now patched on the surface. The pages before him seem tedious, insipid at best.

Deathlessness doesn’t come along with exceptional memory. It fares quite well with autobiographical storage, but otherwise this is something he is on the same level as a mildly bright human. Yet this is just literature, it is too variable. These rants are pointless.

Baekhyeon still pretends to study. At least it takes his mind off a certain thing.

Taeyeon is memorizing a piece of poetry under her breath, with a passé accent, as she tries to make sense of all the crap that’s being said about it.

She scratches her face, her pointer finger nail is always longer, on both hands, and the pimple breaks, a few microliters of blood ooze out in the vicinity of her nose. Baekhyeon stares. A nice colour, nice density, but in the end, he doesn’t even twitch in his chair. He should be surprised that he is tempted so little, his reaction so faint. It doesn’t happen.

She seems to not even notice as she repeats a few lines of dialogue as if they are part of a play.  

Baekhyeon rips a fragment of tissue from the pack sticking out of her bag and presses it there. It permeates the fibres instantly. “Silly,” he says, and she likes the way he whispers, the pitch of it, and Baekhyeon realizes that he’s barely put any breath into it.

She flushes before she shakes her head and turns back to her notes.

Baekhyeon stares at the finger he used to press the tissue, at the residual pink left on the friction ridges of his finger. Like a dried rose petal. It means so little.

Because he has found new blood. Someone to sing for him.  Everything lacks in comparison with what Jongin has given him.

 

 

 

The sounds reach well beyond the perimeter of the house. Baekhyeon goes faster, inquisitive, and inside, he finds Kyeongsu, his back to him as he faces the laptop perched on the piano. They’re moans, skin slapping skin.

He’s watching pornography. 

“You’re defiling it,” Baekhyeon opines, knocking on the wood of the piano as he peers at the screen. Intercourse is so gaudy when portrayed like this. This characteristic is also what brings it commercial success.

“I don’t think I’m the first to do that.” He slings a smirk over his shoulder up at Baekhyeon. At least he hasn’t cleaned the piano. Baekhyeon likes it like this, his property, untouched and still. But further, a portion shows the immaculate lustre of the black wood, ebbing out into fingertip shapes.  A glance to Kyeongsu’s mind, and yes, Sehun had been pressed there and sucked off last night. Thankfully, not a scratch has been left on it.

They continue viewing, blank faced, anchored in place. Then Kyeongsu opens his mouth and attempts to copy one of the moans, the woman’s. It flows down his throat thinly, with reluctance. No exaggerated enough. Baekhyeon remains impassive a little more, up until the pace of the couple picks up and he can’t stand anymore not correcting Kyeongsu’s technique. Then he tries it too, a reserved vocalism in sonority, but with the right enunciation. Kyeongsu attempts mimicking him, and it works to some extent, his wobble adding a kind of charm to it. Their voices blend in a cacophony of fake pleasure, a sort of singing, something ridiculous that buries the ones coming from the laptop.

Xiumin, Suho and Sehun find them like that, as if hysterical. “What the fuck,” Sehun says.

Baekhyeon and Kyeongsu halt mid-moan and regard him coldly. “You’re one to talk.”

Kyeongsu snorts, pausing the video.

Baekhyeon looks at his grin, pure, and deems that he indeed doesn’t mind this new friend, doesn’t mind having the loneliness he didn’t even notice gone.

 

 

 

Dreams keep coming to him, keep pushing him into clinging onto fragile fantasies, keep him thinking, roaming. He walks along the border, a draw through florets whilst repose smothers him. Sometimes, Chanyeol lurks around in a slothful trot, his carnelian fur glistering in the moonlight.  They make no contact, exchange no words.

Baekhyeon can do nothing but walk and wonder - if Jongin is still in pain, if any of the other wolves condemn him, if they should move out of this town already, falsify another series of ID’s, buy a new house and pretend to need a heating system.

 

 

 

Neither of them had asked.

Baekhyeon just finds himself tying a tie around his neck and waiting for Taeyeon by her door, avoiding eye contact with her father. He tries not to laugh at all the scenarios he makes to harm him if he gets too daring with his daughter.

He muses, if Jongin were to inflict all that harm on him instead, his beautiful hands tugging at Baekhyeon’s flesh. His hand lifts out of instinct to splay against his side, where it hurts most. His lips curl with a smile.

He stands a bit straighter. Her father appraising him with his jaw set.

Baekhyeon has never went, nor even been around for long enough to go to a prom. By this time, he would usually be on another continent, having set on fire yet another graduation diploma.

Then Taeyeon is stepping down the stairs and curling an arm around his, a jittery, lipstick-smeared grin on her face. Perhaps this is an experience worth having.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon scents Jongin way before she is out of the car and tugging him toward the fringe of the parking lot, away from the chatter at the entrance of the locale. Jongin comes out into the glow of the street lamp, harsh shadows under his jaw, his eyelashes fanning under his eyes.

Taeyeon jumps to give him a hug. However, his gaze falls on Baekhyeon first. Blank, clean, pretty.

Baekhyeon can’t tell what expression his own face is wearing.

Taeyeon introduces them to one another, all jovial. My friend Jongin, my friend Baekhyeon. They don’t shake hands, but merely throw some nods, some half-smiles overturned with innuendo, acknowledgement. Their connection is soon broken as Jongin focuses entirely on an overenthusiastic Taeyeon.

Baekhyeon takes a step back, to allow them to have their moment, and to rescue himself from the trembling of his skin, the fault of Jongin’s aroma. As he observes them, Baekhyeon feels something -  jealousy, books often speak of it - for the simple fact that she’s had more time to spend with him than Baekhyeon has. That she’s got to witness him grow up, that she’s got his trust. Jongin is placid, in a slant of revelry, his cheeks full from simpering.

Inside, the music starts, all the other attendees rushing to enter. Jongin asks her for a dance, his arms opening elegantly for her to take. The melody seeps out thinly, just the beat making it through, but it suffices for them to clumsily sway.

Her hands wind around his shoulders, as she has to stand on her tiptoes even in her modest high heels to reach comfortably around him. Baekhyeon is still watching, enslaved by the display, by the subtle, precise spin of Jongin’s hips and the gentility of his guidance of her. 

Baekhyeon measures - he will need to be on his toes too in order to wrap himself around Jongin’s tallness. To bring him into a hug, bring him into a kiss.

Their movements dissipate slowly, along with the song, Jongin pushing her away. Just one song. Must be from the strain of his frail leg, close to being healed but not quite there. Taeyeon doesn’t notice him wincing.

He tells her she looks beautiful, then that there’s something on her teeth. She hits him, chuckles, then turns towards Baekhyeon, waving goodbye to Jongin.

Baekhyeon has his arm poised to enclose around Taeyeon’s waist, awaiting. Then he catches Jongin’s eyes, the whites of them stark in the shadow, fixating on his outstretches arm, his parted fingers. Languidly, he lowers it, Jongin following the motion, then dragging, _scraping_ his eyes up and down Baekhyeon’s form. He’s wearing a dark blue suit, silk, a sheen to it, curt seams. It’s from the brief period when he was a politician, and had to paint wrinkles with latex at the corners of his eyes. The jacket is tight around his hips; the slacks stick to his thighs.

The purse of Jongin’s mouth softens. His lids flitter, and he looks away.

Baekhyeon has to hide the sudden burst of glee that laves over him, twisting on his heels.

“What’s got you so happy?” Taeyeon asks.

Baekhyeon looks ahead and catches their reflection on the glass of the doors, side-by-side, Taeyeon’s flowing dress cascading down her body, her skinny ankles peeking out from step to step.

“Looking at you,” he says instead, and they amble into the venue.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon gives in and dances with her too. He can’t be nearly as neat as Jongin, but she is soft in his grasp, their footwork simple. Baekhyeon only basks in whatever Jongin’s left on her. It is what attracted him to her initially. He still finds it pleasurable, heady to be in her proximity.

He offers a few dances, drinks a cup of soda that he tactfully excuses himself to throw up. He cheers for the others, for the small performances they employ in.  

It doesn’t escape him how Taeyeon’s blinking is getting longer, deeper, the ends of her mouth curving into their usual droopiness. She’s always been an early sleeper.

Baekhyeon lets her be, lets her gossip a bit more with her fresh ex-colleagues. If only she put a bit more effort, she would have gotten with at least a few more friends out of this. She is too sleepy to have any regrets now.

He takes her home, up to her room, being that she can no longer stand on her feet. Her father doesn’t say anything, sternly bidding Baekhyeon a two-fingered good bye.

And that was Baekhyeon’s first prom.

 

 

 

For a few moments, he bothers feigning that he’s not trailing after anything, any _one_  as he saunters through the forest. When he looks down, his lacquered shoes are already on the path of the border, a spring to his pace.

It is a nice night, starry, warm, dry. His eyes follow the twinkles. They’re duller now than they were when he used to gaze at them out of wistfulness.

He meets Jongin a few strides into the partition of the path, one aisle for the local hunters to take, and the other going straight between their territories. The forest bed is thicker, less stomped here.

Jongin is sprawled out on the tall grass that frames around him. Baekhyeon approaches and lays down on his side, cross-legged. They’re still close - the path is narrow enough. The serenade of crickets is hushed.

“Am I late?” Baekhyeon asks. His tongue is weighted once he opens his mouth. The effect Jongin has on him.

He huffs, brief and reflexive. Baekhyeon anticipates it, even without reading his mind.

“No.” Jongin turns to look at him, cheeks bordered by rustling greenness; his other side clad in the turquoise veil of the night. Baekhyeon can do nothing but stare.

His gaze dips, to the two bottles Baekhyeon has nestled near him, taken out of the pockets of his suit jacket.  

“You came with goods,” he says, rolling until he is lying on his side, like Baekhyeon, arms pillowing his head. Only his eyes are visible. It’s cute, Baekhyeon thinks. He is cute all over, and it is too soon, way too soon for Baekhyeon to already not know what to do with himself anymore.

“I played hero again and prevented kids from doing stupid things,” he says, aligning the bottles of vodka. A few of the them were mad, intending to pick fights, to avenge the bullying they’ve endured all through high school. They needed some of this liquid courage however. At least, an altercation has been avoided.

“You played thief, you mean,” Jongin says, corrects. It is muffled, still cute. Baekhyeon doesn’t refute him.

Jongin makes a motion with his hand, asking, and it takes too long for Baekhyeon to get it and send one of the bottles rolling over the frontier and into Jongin’s grasp.

“I think I can get drunk,” he says, peering at the clear liquid. “I’ve never tried though.” The small bubbles of air in it stir.

He opens the cap; his fingers slow, as though he does it unwillingly. Baekhyeon contains a growl when the bite coming from it is strong enough to overpower Jongin’s scent. He lifts, his lip fitting around the hem of the bottle with the same alleged qualm. It tips into his mouth, a couple of generous mouthfuls bobbing down his throat. 

More than a frown of distaste, he is bearing one of dismay. “It doesn’t taste like anything. It’s just…warm.”

It seems to be out of annoyance that he starts downing the liquor, half of it soon gone. He licks over his lips, the gleam swollen over them with the tip of a tensed tongue. Fortunately, Baekhyeon is spared the sight once Jongin gets back to drinking, already having his last gulp.

“Now it’s time to wait,” he says. He is so calm, like he just inhaled a litre of water and not some weak poison. He settles on his back, smiling at a ladybug walking up his chest. It crawls until it gets lost in the folds of his shirt. 

Baekhyeon increasingly feels like he is part of a tale, an idealistic, slightly corny one as he coins the flitters in his stomach as being the proverbial butterflies. Reading is a good pastime when he has an infinite amount of it, and he’s read many versions of this sentiment, yet in contrast, they all pale.

“A human would be in a coma by now,” Baekhyeon says, to shut the titter that wanted to worm past his lips. Jongin’s time of reaction is lagged a sliver of a second.

“The effect is barely there,” he says, picking the red little bug away and setting it free. Then sits cross-legged too, in front of Baekhyeon. The pull of his pants over his knees is tauter than that of Baekhyeon’s slacks. “The world is just spinning a little.” He makes a gesture with his fingers, a tiny gap between them. His fingers have long nails, the edges even. Then he frowns. “Which well, it was doing anyway.”

Baekhyeon loses composure and smiles, its strength just shy of cutting his face in half. He sends rolling the other bottle towards Jongin. His grip on the neck is slacker, a bit disobedient. To an untrained eye, there would be no difference.

This one he drinks with comfort, with expectance, slowly.  Baekhyeon is given a soft Jongin, eyelids drooping, and a looped, facile beam. He looks fragile, vulnerable, and Baekhyeon is hit with how much he wants to make sure that nothing bad ever happens to him.

He plucks tiny flowers and gathers them in his lap. He begins braiding them together, hands working absently, but deftly. He already has a string of about a palm’s length when he shoots a look to Baekhyeon.

“What happens if a blood sucker drinks?” It is genuine curiosity, in the tone of an overindulged kindergartener. His gaze goes from the bottle next to him to Baekhyeon’s eyes and back. 

“Not much,” Baekhyeon replies. He reaches over and sucks a few sips from the bottle before Jongin even has the chance to blink. All he feels is the prickle of the vapours, the wetness. It won’t be exactly pleasurable to retch this up. “My blood vessels will dilate, and I’ll look like the protagonist of a horror movie.” He bends a bit out of the shade and into the beams of moonlight. Jongin cranes his head forward, scanning Baekhyeon with a mild squint. The alcohol is just starting to take effect. He can feel his skin stretching over the push of the veins surrounding his eyes, where it is thinnest, and allows for their colour to show through. It should make for a horrific image.

But Jongin just keeps looking at him with interest, with a stark lucidity. The space between them is suddenly shortened, Jongin making tiny hops onward. Dizziness starts invading Baekhyeon, toppling his senses.

“Watched any?” Jongin asks.

Baekhyeon is yet again abused, this time by the spice of his drunken mouth. His throat burns.

“No. Nothing scares me anymore.” He never noticed this really - that now he has nothing to fear, but then his thoughts stray, go to a place with more of that loneliness than the one Sehun has awakened nightmares about, and he ponders changing his answer. Lying to Jongin was never part of his intentions.

“Oh,” Jongin says then, his mouth rounding around the short sound. “That’s…sad. Kinda.”

“It doesn’t bring me any grief. Sometimes, I just wish it took a while longer for me to turn into stone.”  

Jongin replies with a nod, his head heavy, and he reaches for the bottle. It could be thirst, could something to occupy his hands with, or, if Baekhyeon dares assume, a nervous fiddling, as if he’s altered by Baekhyeon’s presence as well. This too may pass for longful conjecture.

Baekhyeon’s strays off Jongin’s fiddling with the flowers, his quick fingers on the thin stems, and looking up through the opening of the border. The stars are still there, still twinkling.

“Boo,” he hears, Jongin in his face, hands clawed on either side of a contorted expression.

Baekhyeon’s dead heart seems to have broken off its withered stem and dropped and crashed between his ribs as he jumps in place, until all is left is a visceral puddle at the base of his soul.

Crinkles bring him back - Jongin’s laughter, dulcet and nasal, his teeth exposed and his cheeks dimpling severely and again, so beautiful that Baekhyeon can’t even be bothered to regain his bearings.

“I scared you,” Jongin says into the chimes, bruised by mirth. Baekhyeon spots the slim dash of warmth that coats the tight dents of his face. It is nowhere near as keen as he’d seen him give Taeyeon. His eyes don’t bunch up to the degree they did for her.

He’s not yet there, not yet deserving. Baekhyeon will earn himself some of that warmth.

“You did,” Baekhyeon says after he restores function to his innards. He is a bit flustered.

 Jongin is proud of himself. His hands scoot further through the grass, in search for more tiny flowers.

“How old are you?” Baekhyeon inquires then. Jongin seems to be in the state to not avoid confessing a few details. Then again, Baekhyeon’s ability to judge is stale.

“Eighteen,” he says. That is a long pause. Pink smears on his palm. “I transformed late.”

Eighteen is indeed very late. Thirteen is ideal. Not being in his other shape whilst his human form developed could be problematic.

Baekhyeon discards courtesy and meddles. “How was your first time?”

His eyes dim, as if he’s gone to a faraway place. When he returns, a grimace grooves his mouth. “I was on my way home, alone. I hid in an alley.” He says it clinically, like he thinks about it often. “It hurt. I was scared.” The remains of that fear are still discernable.  

“For how long have you been lying?” Baekhyeon presses, encouraged by the openness Jongin is showing him.

“Five.”

He’s twenty-three then. He has never seen leprosy, never seen a session of bloodletting, never had to study under the fickle light of a gas lamp.

Baekhyeon looks at 23 year-old skin and eyes and sees so much light that it could never ever dim.

“Taeyeon must be so trusting,” Baekhyeon muses. Fooling her is quite hard even while Baekhyeon can read her mind. Jongin might be different with her.

“She really likes you,” Jongin just says with intent. Baekhyeon doesn’t doubt that they must be close enough for Taeyeon to spill about her crush on him to Jongin.

Baekhyeon looks at his fingers, stained a pastel green, and then at his eyes, sporting a softness. “What about you? Do you like her?”

Jongin’s head retracts in the shadow, a twitch there, and Baekhyeon is too hopeful to have imagined the beginning of a negation in the motion.

“No.” Silence. Jongin is so buzzed. “I don’t. We’re just friends.”

At last, Baekhyeon is freed from the shallow tug of their animal instinct and falls into a natural, sensible thing in between. He isn’t enslaved to want anymore.

Possibly, it is something tame, faulty compared to what a mortal feels, given their dependency on devotion. But after so much nothingness, dreary paralysis, it is Jongin who makes him think no more about the bliss of being ripped to shreds and set afire.

Jongin leans over to take the open bottle standing next to Baekhyeon’s thigh.  His face is close anew, too close, pure, fragrant warmth this time, and Baekhyeon wants to reach out and pet the luscious hair drooping into his eyes. Next, he gazes at Jongin’s neck, at the cut he’d lathered venom over, and it is fresh, the red barely wilted. It would only need a small move to part open all over again. Bleed and send Baekhyeon into delirium.

He swallows three sips; keeping near, leaning, choking Baekhyeon, and he is a bit pink in the cheeks, skittish even. It is coquetry - a tipsy Jongin displaying signs of attraction to him. Even though he is so young and charming and could find someone of his own kin, he is here with Baekhyeon, smiling under the midnight.

Baekhyeon hopes his motive, his flirting passes to Jongin, despite the fact that his body gives little to no reaction, for he lacks the necessary bodily functions. He hopes that Jongin still  _sees_.

Another sip. The bottle is empty. “It’s not…” he trails off, his gaze is sober on Baekhyeon. It pierces. “You don’t look bad.” His hand lifts a bit, approaching Baekhyeon’s face. At the last moment, before it touches, it rebounds and gestures to Jongin’s cheeks instead.

Their distension waned, but the veins still bulging on Baekhyeon’s face never felt thicker. The blue of them deepens.

He stares a bit more, swaying, and he loses his balance at some point, nearly crashing into Baekhyeon. Baekhyeon is strangled then, a full blown cough jolting up his throat as Jongin’s smell permeates into him.

“Do I pain you that much…” he trails off, eyes wide.

Baekhyeon is heaving.

“I’m hungry. I’m super hungry,” Jongin mumbles then, erasing the twinge crooking his previous words.

He stands, stumbling, and all over his clothes, dry vegetation clings. An ant is walking the slope of his shoulders.

A wall of coldness takes Jongin’s place.

“It really doesn’t look bad.” With one last look over his shoulder, a lazy smile over bitten lips, he turns and walks away.

On Baekhyeon’s knee rests the wreath of braided flowers. He takes it home with him.

 

 

 

Sehun is standing in the middle of the living room, playing with air and a paper plane. It flies in a circle above his palm. It’s an exercise for control.  

His nostrils flare as Baekhyeon approaches, questioning. The trajectory of the plane falters.

“I made another friend,” Baekhyeon explains. He is smiling, content. He still has a while to go before he forgets Jongin.

“Of the wrong species.”

“ _Again_ ,” Baekhyeon says with pathos.

“You’re becoming a social whore.” 

“It is so becoming on me, isn’t it.” Baekhyeon’s fingers poke between Sehun’s ribs and wiggle, and it tickles enough for him to lose control of the plane and smack him right in the face.

“Oh look, your face just got flatter.” Baekhyeon trots upstairs, laughing.

 

 

 

For the first time, the lattice looks daunting. Her dream has already started; he could watch it from a few kilometres away.

Baekhyeon clenches his jaw and climbs anyway.

He isn’t here in order to extract info about Jongin anymore. Maybe all along she wasn’t a façade, a ragged stand in. She is a friend, as close, dangerously so, as he could ever be to a human.

It brings the same calm, the same amusement to see what her mind is concocting.

He catches glimpses of her desiring him, short, and lacking substance. Too often, he is integrated in the scenarios. He is always a good guy, a gentle guy, and Baekhyeon is glad that her subconscious never met the monster governing him. There is carefulness in the way he is handled behind her eyelids - from the bit of infatuation, and the selfishness that comes along.

It is fun, still, and Baekhyeon keeps sitting on the edge of the window, eyes smiling and face buried in his shirt where Jongin is lingering stronger than in his memories.

 

 

 

Kyeongsu is in his room, a blood bag in his mouth as he is bent over a book. It is one of Baekhyeon’s favourites. It has his notes all over it, so much that the faded script underneath is nearly illegible. It is about war, the olden methods of it, swords and stakes and inoculated patriotism. 

“You’re early this time. Was it boring?” Kyeongsu asks, pronunciation in his usual skewness. He takes the bag away, and his lips are a shock of crimson in the middle of his pallor.

“It never is.” Baekhyeon’s shirt isn’t stuck to the gash on his skin anymore. It finally comes out clean. He hooks it on a protruding book from the shelf.

“But you won’t be going back.” It is a statement, and he sees the glint of a sip of blood welling behind his teeth, soaking into his tongue. He isn’t wrong. Baekhyeon doesn’t want to go back.

His finger taps on the paragraph where there is happening a pep talk to starved troops, Sun Tzu being heavily quoted. Then Kyeongsu closes the book, and regards Baekhyeon.

“It won’t be like this anymore,” he begins. Baekhyeon completely shuts out his thoughts, and focuses solely on what his voice offers. “They have weapons now. Nuclear weapons. If they discover us, they’ll be afraid, and gone are the days when they were helpless. We shouldn’t corner them. With their artillery, we’ll all be gone in the blink of an eye if they want us to be.”

He talks to Baekhyeon in a teaching tone, as if Baekhyeon is three and about to suck on poison. But then there is the stiver of warning, of insistence, orderly, demanding Baekhyeon to keep to himself from now on, keep distance.

He closes the book then, laying it on the bed. He gets up, then moves to where Baekhyeon’s shirt is, picking from the breast pocket of it the little flower ring Jongin left for him a few days ago. It wilted prettily. “Better stick to the enemy, who doesn’t fear us, than the ones who fear.”

 

 

 

Baekhyeon drifts into the pit of the library. He finds the handbound tomes, stitches unravelling, their leather covers softened to a mush. They’re handwritten, letters small and close together. They could pass for print due to the precision of vampire coordination.

He reads about werewolves, starting with one of the first records of them, in a language he has a vague recollection of Xiumin talking sometimes. There is a bit of a bias - their breed glorified whilst the wolves are underestimated, derided.

The shortfall of impartiality relents throughout the newer volumes, changing into exact descriptions.

The gore of a first transformation, a body cracking and reshaping into another, the anguish, much alike to vampire revival. Mating, the plain procedure that simmers in their blood since the day they were born, without them having any say in it. The bite mark - wolf with wolf so they perpetuate lineages as strong as possible. The stiffness of the ranking, the power of an alpha, the conduct of a beta. No one is left behind. The elemental hatred they have for vampires, amplified by ethical reasons beyond their crude instincts.

Baekhyeon is about to turn the page when he deviates. He queries if he could ever sink his teeth into Jongin’s shoulder, and leave there a promise of love rather than stealing his life supply. If Jongin could do the same, if he could penetrate Baekhyeon’s skin, could want him enough to gift him a bite. Or find another method to mark him if that doesn’t work - burn him, drill into him, tie him and make him his own.

 

 

 

It is the last week of high school.

As a greeting, he finds Kyeongsu sucking face with Xiumin. They’re not even quiet, fervent in their search to grasp one another, to pleasure. From outside, Kyeongsu presses Xiumin against a beam of the wall, but misses, pushes too hard, so they end up breaking the window and falling through. Without a hitch, they keep making out through the shards. The glint of glass is lovely in the rising sun as it spreads to the feet of the piano.

Baekhyeon saw this romance brewing. It will do Xiumin good - he’s always been too proper and seemed uncomfortable with his own demeanour. And Kyeongsu would like to disrobe of his nomadic lifestyle and try stability for once.

Baekhyeon smiles, slightly sad, because he sees the intention they have of leaving, breaking hand-in-hand into the wide world. But not for long, fifty years, travel a little and then reunite.

“You better fix that,” Baekhyeon tells them, stepping on sparkles.

 

 

 

He anticipates having an audience now.

Baekhyeon is playing a violin like he would a guitar, as it rests on his thigh and he is bowing over it. This time, he has no song, no tune, merely controlling the pick of his nail over the cords. His voice tries to follow along some portions, to tinkle like a bell beside the lacy vibration of the notes.

He slips and glances out, catching a set of luminescent eyes. Jongin is perched on a tall stone, a tiny sway to his shoulders.  

It takes too many tries for Baekhyeon to start singing again, for the smile on his face refuses to fade. Jongin grins encouragingly at him.

 

 

 

On the desk lays his graduation diploma. Another one.  On top of it is a notice for revoking his driver’s licence.

“I crossed on red,” Baekhyeon responds.

Suho has just bought one of those swinging chairs, and the motion is unnerving when he engages in it. It picks up to an irregular tempo. “Your grades dropped too.”

“Lamentable.”

“You used to be such a good boy. What happened to you?” His eyes are closed.

“According to Sehun, I’m being a filthy whore these days. And you’re a failure of a parent.”

One of his eyes cracks open. “Sehun said that?” A nod. “Then I really am a failure of a parent. That mouth of his needs some potty training.”

“Lamentable.”

Suho pelts him with a half glare.

“Kyeongsu told me about nuclear weapons,” Baekhyeon promptly begins.

“It is all truth,” Suho says simply. The rocking slows a notch. The possibility doesn’t frighten him, nothing like the soul-crushing dread he faces every day at the hospital in terminal patients.

For them, it is about time to die all the time. 

His only concern is Sehun. He will miss Sehun. How beautiful Sehun is when he is happy, when he is proud of himself. Just Sehun.

And Baekhyeon  _can’t wait_  to be consumed by the same kind of attachment, now that it almost in his grasp. He can’t wait for Jongin to be his, to be maddened by him all day every day.

“It would be sad if our kin ended via bombardment,” Baekhyeon speaks.

Suho imagines it - fireworks descending upon empty souls, pretty fire climbing up his skin.

“We won’t,” Suho counters, and he says it with such conviction, expression set, the echo of it rattling between his ears. It is so easy to believe him, to believe a man who has nothing but love.

 

 

 

After he washes up, Baekhyeon drips physiological serum into his eyes to clean the build-up of pigment from his contact lenses. He’s on his back, looking at the minimalistic chandelier dangling from the ceiling as salty trails run down the sides of his face. The glow of it is meek, pleasant, unnecessary.

Even as his throat squeezes, scraped, he doesn’t move. Jongin’s heat radiates, blocking the waves of coldness coming from the open doors of Baekhyeon’s room. His scent is clean, cleaner than usual. It isn’t subdued by heavy humidity, and Baekhyeon suddenly remembers that summer has begun a few fortnights ago and the rains have lessened.

He is half-naked this time, and Baekhyeon sees all the marks on him, the healthy colouring of his skin ridged with coral. The bruises have faded a lot.

His gait is shy, hesitant, and Baekhyeon feels so too, as much as he feels at peace. This is how infatuation should feel.

“I’m better at this than you,” Baekhyeon says, and he realizes that he’ll never get used to gagging on Jongin’s perfume.

He shuffles in place to take his shoes off, then bare feet sink into the fluff of the white rug. “I’ll practice,” he says.

Baekhyeon reaches into the tiny box next to him and tops another two plastic vials of saline solution. The murk in his eyes is not all gone, and Baekhyeon has to see Jongin in all his glory.

“Please,” Baekhyeon says, fresh rivulets on his face. He doesn’t say anything else, merely observing Jongin stepping into his room. There are many telling things strewn around, how Baekhyeon goes about with his endless life, what entertains it.

“So I’ll probably end up doing all of this too, in this upcoming eternity of mine,” Jongin sighs, fingers over books and old albums and stacks of scientific records that litter the shelves. It is not messy, Baekhyeon simply doesn’t bother with organisation - it is boring, a blight.

Baekhyeon keeps quiet, the arch of his grin ridiculous as he catches it mirroring in the glaze of a vase.  With his sleeve, he wipes at his face and the hem comes back stained with black.

Vaguely, he registers Sehun’s thrashing in Suho’s arms, wondering what is up with the stink and the noises.

“I’ve got a guest,” Baekhyeon murmurs, just about when Sehun reaches for Suho’s cologne, intending to soak a few tissues with it and stuff them up his nose, then march up to see what the fuss is about. Jongin’s gaze snaps to him, and Baekhyeon just changes the slope of his smile and hopes that satisfies for an answer.

Baekhyeon wants to ask too, why, how come that Jongin is here. But he doesn’t. Jongin would probably not have a reason anyway, something that would make more sense than just complying to the push of his body.

He turns back to the shelves and finds a disk, the only one without a cover. He puts the needle on, a kind jazz laden with saxophone. Soon he is undulating along. At first, it is stuttered, unsure, a dance that doesn’t know what to convey.

Baekhyeon stares again at the gash on his neck. Its colour is pallid now. He’s finally fighting off the sear of the venom.

His heart rate grows, his arms don definitude. He appears to lose himself into the motion. He is so damn beautiful like this, muscles working to conduct him. Grace, aiming to seduce almost, slow along the movement of his hips. Maybe werewolves have this factor too, their constitution striving to attract vampires, the same way vampires were built to attract their prey.

Baekhyeon wishes so bad to see what kind of worlds roam his mind.

He stops only when the song does. He lets the disk play on, only lowering the volume until it nearly disappears.

Jongin faces him then, handling the graduation cap Baekhyeon had just worn today at the ceremony. He nears, and Baekhyeon stiffens. But Jongin is careful, as if approaching a wounded animal, and he slowly sets the cap over Baekhyeon’s head. His hair is not completely dry, and the water permeates into the cheap silk, darkening its edges.

“You’re quite cute, if I look closely,” are the first words he says with a nod as he scrutinizes Baekhyeon. He seems to be in awe with his own observation.  _Cute_  is a word meant to describe the living.  

“If you don’t look closely?" The tops of his cheeks tense, as if ablaze.  

Jongin takes the books off the little recliner in the opposite corner of the room, and hoists his feet on the tower of renaissance literature. He squints through the distance put between them. “Still cute.”

“What else am I?”

“Cute is all you are,” Jongin says, his look hell-bent. Baekhyeon feels barren.

“Beside cute,” he takes a deep breath and burns, “I’m also scared of you,” Baekhyeon says. A banality. This trepidation is the thrill of his life - how Jongin could terminate him if he so pleases, how Baekhyeon could lose himself and suck him dry. “You’re so strong. I can’t fathom how you took down Kyeongsu. He’s a hunk of a man compared to me.”

Jongin leans forward a bit, head between his shoulders, and there is something about the glow of the lamp in this room, the posture, that gives Baekhyeon utmost trust in Jongin, as blind as he is. “Don’t fear me,” he says soft and prudent, and it is so weird that  _all_  he has is the inflection of these words.

“You’re the perfect opponent for me, since my talent is utterly useless on you.” He lays himself out to Jongin. “It would be so easy. Don’t you wish to kill me?”

Something tautens on his visage, a yank to his features that discloses dolour. Suddenly, Baekhyeon is the small one, young and stupid under his scrutiny.

“Not even a little?” Baekhyeon presses. Better have Jongin deem him a fool than keep being shaken by uncertainty.  

“Don’t you,” Jongin starts, and his jaw rolls, but he speaks anyway “don’t you dream of me? Think of me?” Worry there, in the shivering of his pupils, in the pressure of the air shaping the words. Then resolution. “Because I dream of you.”

Baekhyeon gut swiftly ravels. He tucks his chin into his chest, swallowing, smiling.  His hands come together to fiddle with one another. Jongin has just gifted him a confession.

“Do you—” and Baekhyeon stutters too, finally, finally loses himself and it is  _amazing_. “Do you sleep a lot?”

There is only the distinctive squelch of a lip being chewed between teeth and the dampened crack of a stretching neck. Jongin is curling into himself too, fighting to keep his grin from opening. His heart is thumping a nice rhythm, a lull that makes Baekhyeon believe in happiness. They’re both avoiding eye contact, each to their own, and it is bizarre to shy away like this, overthrown by something that is meant to happen and gives them no chance to adjust to.

“I dream of devouring you,” Baekhyeon says, still into his chest. He picks at the stained cuff of his shirt. Jongin’s softened too, twisting the pages of a book.

“Me too.”

 _I too dream of you devouring me,_ Baekhyeon hears and it’s so silly that he can do nothing but double over chuckling until he falls off the couch, uncontrollable peals ringing from within him.

 

 

 

“That was cheesy as fuck.” Sehun barges in right after Jongin’s left. The last song of the album just started. “I wanted to throw up. I still want to throw up.”

Baekhyeon looks at him blankly, as he seems to not be able to take down the corners of his mouth no matter how hard he tries.

Sehun glares at his dazed expression. His arms flail over his head. “It smells like shit in here. Now Imma go eat grass so I can throw up.”

He struts out a few steps, still determined. Then he steps back. “He’s right though. You are _super_ cute.”

Baekhyeon tumbles on his side, not even giggling anymore, but bubbling there on the floor.

 

 

 

The window is now repaired, even though the glass is not really the same thickness as the other panes.

He talks to Suho about this increasingly frequent visitor, the rambles skittering in his mouth. Jongin this and Jongin that, before he forgets, _before he forgets_. Suho is pacific, silent throughout the monologue. His age shows. There is not a single thing that he doesn’t understand, he doesn’t approve of. He’s experienced a lot beyond Sehun, who is a case of serendipity.

“This is not how we should be approaching our singers,” he says finally.

“Sehun is often glad that you chose to fuck instead of eat him.”

A flash of sadness, amorphous. The rain visible from outside waves unnaturally for a few counts. “I just couldn’t slaughter him. Nor could I keep away.”

“Now it’s just a sweet compromise.” It offers comfort.

“I’ll talk to Chanyeol. Let our boys be.”

“I’m not your boy,” Baekhyeon amends blandly.

Suho grins, not believing him for a second.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon goes hunting, out of hunger, or to quench his restlessness, perhaps to go away from all the remarks and sly smirks everyone in the house can’t seem to stop throwing him. Being undead hasn’t erased the urge to make fun of someone for having a crush.

Jongin is four legged as he prowls around into the umbra. He is moving fast, faster, and Baekhyeon attempts so too. It is painless now. He’s all healed. Both of them are.

They somehow convene into a chase with no finish line. Baekhyeon can catch onto trees, whereas Jongin’s size makes it harder to navigate through narrow spaces. Baekhyeon feels so bright, so alive. Nothing hurts and there is Jongin.

Beside the lake, he catches an olden fox, its brows whitened. It didn’t even struggle.

He uses some of the fresh water to wash his mouth of the fur. He’s long past spilling any blood on himself.

He raises and walks back towards the forest line. Jongin is stepping halfway over it and into the sun. His wolf is gorgeous.

This time, Baekhyeon dares a touch, fingers in the fur, right between the ears. It is indeed velvety, dense, a pretty shine next to the sparkle of Baekhyeon’s skin. Jongin allows him, lowers his head. His tail wags.

“You’re burning,” he says. “More so than usual.” The stands of his fur carry sunrays, gleam, and Baekhyeon’s fingers do too, silver through gold. It’s a beautiful sight.

The wolf slides away from Baekhyeon’s touch, and in a moment he is back in human form. The last of his bruises have faded too, his skintone even. He’s naked, dirty, pulse jumpy. His hair is fluffy, the heavy glint of it frizzy by the ends. For an eternity, he will look like this. He will be the paragon of allurement.  

And  _Baekhyeon’s._

Jongin runs right into the water, one brief look stolen from Baekhyeon as he settles, submerged up to his neck. Little waves glide by his chin, up to his cheeks, cadences. Baekhyeon can only see a bit below his ribs, before the slush of the water obstructs the view.

Baekhyeon takes his shoes off, and folds up his pants. His feet dip into the water. He feels as if he is on the cusp of the canyon again.

 “You’re breathing,” Jongin comments after long while. The angle of the cast shadows have changed by at least twenty degrees.

Baekhyeon hasn’t even noticed. But he knows why.  _I can’t get enough of you._  “I am,” he voices. “Maybe you’ll make me laugh. I need to have with  _what.”_

He wonders if he smells like anything to Jongin.  

“I’m not funny,” Jongin says, and he turns a bit, looking up at Baekhyeon.

“You don’t need to be.” Baekhyeon says. And this is  _his_  confession, implying that his mere presence is enough to bring him a happiness so strong that it can only climax in laughter.

Conflict passes on Jongin’s face. Then it becomes clear, stark, that he is touched, he likes what he is hearing. 

He surges forward until his hand is on Baekhyeon’s thigh, water soaking onto the bunched fabric. Baekhyeon bursts into chuckles from the sheer feeling of it, a blaze felt though ice, a fitful frenzy in his chest. He is smiling, impossibly wide. It all shows in Jongin’s seething eyes. For once, he sees himself as beautiful, worthy of devotion.

Jongin must be seeing him so too, because in another blink, he is taking down Baekhyeon, sticks him to the shore, and he is puffing staccato, delicious breaths over Baekhyeon’s cleaved lips.

Their noses touch. Baekhyeon stops smiling, instead laying limply, infatuated, complete with care and hunger. It is Jongin who cedes, pressing right up on Baekhyeon’s mouth. It is nothing but a slotting, a single motion accompanied by tension and the heat of his mouth. He is surprised at the softness, the warmth, and mostly, the fact that it is  _Jongin._  The contact breaks off, a soundless rapture. But Jongin keeps just breathing there in short gasps. It is different from having summer air gathering in his mouth. Entirely different. Summer air never instilled him into dazedness like Jongin is doing. Never made him _want_ so much.

Baekhyeon reaches out, makes to lay a hand on Jongin’s side, to bring him back in.

Yet Jongin is already gone, golden into the meadow, as he gallops into the forest.

Baekhyeon is left looking at the sky as it clears, light clouds sweeping away.

“What a tease,” he says, to no one, feet still kicking in the water like a smitten kid.

 

 

 

“I think you’re so dead that you’re putrefying,” Sehun says, crude as always. He stops tapping away at the game on his phone. “Because otherwise, why do you keep getting stinkier and stinkier?”

Baekhyeon closes in on him, bending over his shoulder to see the cacophony of colours as a boy jumps from one train line to another. Baekhyeon stays there, choking Sehun with the stink until his character suddenly dies. “Oh, you only have two hundred million,” Baekhyeon says, reading the score. He’s been playing this round for over eight hours.

Sehun is fuming and contemplating how to kill him.

“You don’t want to touch me,” he tsks. “The stink will be all over you.”  

“Has he bitten you? Are you transforming into a fucking mutt?” Sehun screeches after his ascending back.

Baekhyeon halts. It does kind of feel as though he has imprinted on Jongin too. This is a new kind of fixation, an anomaly in his construct.

“Nah,” he says.

 

 

 

In the end, it is still Jongin who comes back, climbs into his room and discreetly settles behind Baekhyeon.

The rag in Baekhyeon’s hand halts, then goes slower over the planes of the furniture. Spring cleaning, a season too late.

Jongin lounges on the Barcelona couch, head held by his bent arm, his extremities spilling over. He is fully clothed, a shirt too tight, too childish, and it stretches taut around the bulging of his shoulders.

His attention is strict on Baekhyeon, and he is pinned under it when he happens to catch it. Absently, he carries on organizing the shelves, the pile of trash growing in the middle of the room. He’s reaching for a stack of rosin envelopes when he looks at him again, and he finds Jongin as if he is drunk, gone, a sharp tint to his eyes.  Not once does his focus veer off Baekhyeon.

The foremost ingot of rosin shatters under the stress of Baekhyeon’s fingers. It sounds like ice breaking, like bones breaking. A few amber crumbs fall from the wrapper to the floor. Jongin stares at him, unblinking.

He stays still, waits, waits for Jongin’s beautiful mouth to part, to lure him. Steps, three of them, and then Baekhyeon climbs into Jongin’s lap, settles, merges with him.

First, he cherishes their enclosure, the pliancy of Jongin under his touch. His _warmth_. He is still taller than Baekhyeon, even whilst he is perched on his thighs. He’s looking down at him fondly, boundless. His muscles twitch under Baekhyeon, swell and wane. They’re tapered slimly by the ends, defined. Much more pleasant than Baekhyeon’s uniform, purely solid physique.

Jongin eyes fall closed, overwrought, his lashes sprinkling over his cheeks. Thence he jolts, knees coming in, taking Baekhyeon along into him. His wanton expression beclouds, deluges.  He sighs, and Baekhyeon, from being this close, close enough to feel Jongin’s heartbeat as if it is his own, he can get drunk, intoxicated on Jongin’s breath, on him. His hand climbs over Jongin’s shoulder and comes to rest on his nape, fingers lost in his hair.

Jongin sighs once more. Jongin maddens Baekhyeon once more.

Their lips meld, tangle, press, take, and liquid pleasure pours down Baekhyeon’s throat, raw smog from Jongin’s mouth into his. Baekhyeon’s chest vibrates – a growl, a moan perhaps, just something to rely how heavenly the taste of him is, how much he wants him. They part, not to breathe, but to kiss again, another one, another first one. The slide of their lips is careful, diminutive, but  _deep_ , athirst. Soon, it gets wet. Venom tangles with saliva, lips licked over and over until soaked through. Bites too, a few teasing, but others aggressive, daring, looking to pierce nearly, but to make a mark, not a wound.

Yet Jongin needs air as there is none in Baekhyeon for him to steal. He doesn’t go far. He rests his forehead on Baekhyeon’s and gulps down lungfuls from the tiny space left between their lips. Each exhale feels like another kiss to Baekhyeon. It tastes the same but not exactly.

He dips for a real press, melting their lips together, angles slightly, to grab and suckle on as much flesh as possible. Jongin mewls then, startled, delighted, his hands tightening on Baekhyeon’s hips, and kisses back.

It is not about technique - there is no way being with Jongin could ever be bad, but Baekhyeon senses hesitance underlying in the minimal rigidity of Jongin’s body. A slowness. Overthinking. It could be that this is the first time Jongin is engaging with someone else like this - perhaps he is unsure of himself, lost, or Baekhyeon is just moving too fast.

Baekhyeon’s has his other hand that is on Jongin’s waist joining the one resting over his nape. He cups his jaw, tangles fingers gently in his hair. It’s similar to how his fur, feels. Soft, fluffy. Baekhyeon scratches at his scalp.

He parts from him with a quiet squelch, with a lingering suck. Jongin doesn’t search for air. His heart beats slow but hard, insistent knocks as if it wants out. He seems calm, blissful. His eyes are still closed; lips plumper already from Baekhyeon’s mild suction, from the irritation that his venom causes. Baekhyeon likes them so much that he fears he will bruise them blue if he truly had his way with them.

The fingers Baekhyeon has in his hair twist, just a bit, just to make Jongin look at him. “I still can’t remember you properly,” he says, and it winnows over Jongin’s face, chilly. Jongin shivers. “This much your mind denies me.” His eyelashes are longer at the corners. They flutter. “It’s torturous.”

Jongin’s thighs are now limp under him, his back too. His hands aren’t anywhere on Baekhyeon, dead by his sides. “Kiss it better?” Baekhyeon pleads softly. “I _want_ to think of you all the time.”

His pupils dilate. “You can’t remember me?” He barely had enough air to say that. It comes out frail, silent. His face is tense with surprise however. Baekhyeon feels his jaw slackening in his palm.

“I remember _of_ you. But not…” It’s fuzzy, the explanation. Just like how Jongin becomes in his mind after a while. Faded. “You’re gorgeous right now.” He is. He is. So gorgeous. So alive, so pink and panting and thrumming for Baekhyeon, _because_ of Baekhyeon. “And I’ll remember that you’re gorgeous, but not really what this gorgeousness looks like.” He stoops, steals a kiss, swallows, moans. “Not really _how_ you taste, but that I love it.”

“I didn’t know that,” says Jongin, low, dismal. He squeezes Baekhyeon, peers at him with a gaze so soft that Baekhyeon feels embraced by it, cradled. So he doesn’t elaborate on how he sometimes even loses the sharpness of his senses when Jongin is nearby, how he cannot see him in even other people’s minds unless he gets really close.

“Now you do. So kiss it better?”

 He smiles – his reddest, prettiest smile to date, and complies, scooting to the middle of the couch and gathering Baekhyeon into his chest, lips immediately over his, filling, wetting, demanding at Baekhyeon’s cold, parted ones. He is eager now, unrestrained, delving to satisfy, and it  _works_  because Baekhyeon is pretty sure he’s levitating. It escalates from there into a sinuous rut, the imminent grinding that came with their keenness, with their proximity. Baekhyeon hasn’t felt so hot, so sensitive in forever, not like he is with Jongin’s calloused hands roaming all over him, under clothes, on top of clothes, and lastly residing on his lower back, cupping the entirety of it in his palms. He could compare this with hunting, senseless and hunger driven. But this is just him and Jongin, just thrill and anticipation and no means to ever find satiation.

They’re suddenly free falling, the crinkles of breaking glass running in the background. They’ve broken through the window when Jongin changed their positions and he did  _something_  so lovely with his tongue that it had Baekhyeon crashing his hips into Jongin’s.

Baekhyeon has the time to rotate them in the air so that he lands on the ground first and Jongin on top of him. Baekhyeon can drop into a bed of glass shards and not bleed, but Jongin is another story.

They still don’t stop. Jongin’s hands go into Baekhyeon’s hair too. It is thicker, blacker, and he can tug as much as he wants and it still won’t tear. Between kisses, Baekhyeon has the incentive to drag them away from the mess of broken glass bit by bit. “Please don’t bleed on me,” whispers as he retracts his mouth and goes for Jongin’s neck, his delirious pules spread through the thin veins all over the surface, and deeper, under the push of his swollen muscles. Baekhyeon wants to push that thrum to the max.

The angle of his neck opens, and through his own smouldering inebriation, it takes a while to comprehend that Jongin is  _offering_  himself, barring silky skin for his teeth. Jongin liked the venom, the rush of it through his system, charring with satisfaction. Baekhyeon’s mouth parts and licks over the juncture, followed by the gentle, unmeaning graze of his teeth. Jongin shakes, violently, and he is hard and throbbing, pressing against Baekhyeon’s inguen.

But Baekhyeon doesn’t do more. Just a weak blemish colours the spot.

“Fuck,” Jongin says, breaking away. That word was a moan too, gruff and airy and superb like all the others.

Baekhyeon licks over his lips. They’re drenched, Jongin’s saliva welled in the cracks. ”Fuck,” Baekhyeon says too, because it is fitting, and Jongin looks at him, the glaze of his eyes wiped away as he stares. Then he bursts into a grin of complete happiness.   

“You better repair that,” Kyeongsu shouts from the roof, and Baekhyeon laughs. Jongin buries himself in Baekhyeon’s shoulder, hips swerving away from contact.  

 

 

 

Three days later, he finds a Sehun holding menacingly a few pieces of pottery. He’s furious, but more than that, sad.

“I haven’t even caught a tiger yet,” Sehun complains. One item in his hand shakes, threatens to drop to its demise. Xiumin stops rummaging through his cabinet to glance at Sehun, patient, and retrieves the item from him with caution.

“There’s Baek for that,” Xiumin says, a quarter of a look thrown to Baekhyeon behind. There is no one better at hunting that Xiumin. Baekhyeon doesn’t even come in third place on this list, simply because he can’t read the mind of an animal, and never really bothered otherwise understanding their behaviour.

“I spared a few for you to practice on,” Baekhyeon assures.

Sehun’s sorrow doesn’t dim the slightest. Gusts of wind knock down a few of the trinkets sitting on top of the cabinet as he storms out.

Baekhyeon straightens them; helps Xiumin put them in boxes. They’re both understanding of what Sehun must be going through, having only lived for a few years and having none of the resistance that comes with being a centenarian. To him, this is one more person leaving him behind.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon is surprised at himself for coming back, somewhat beholden. He needn’t be here either - sometimes still hears her, from afar, when he is willing to listen.

He stands frozen, like he did the first time, leaning on the wall in the dark. He sees the numerous open letters on a table. She’s been accepted to a few universities.

Her room is pretty much the same, the only thing different being that the smell of Jongin is fainter, nearly gone, compared with the taste he’s had of him. Unconsciously, his fingers move to his lips, patting a few times there.

She jerks awake from a dream, a typical fall, and he senses it beforehand. He doesn’t flee, instead jumping back out and latches under the sill. Once she is conscious, he raps his knuckles on the window frame, peeking his head over. He’s done all these things before. 

She blinks in disbelief a few times at him, considering that perhaps she is hallucinating, but she’s okay with that anyway.

Her hair is still not dry all the way, and it is flattened on a side.

“I’m sorry for that time,” Baekhyeon begins, and he climbs just a bit higher, for his upper body to be visible.

“It patched up stronger,” Taeyeon says, tugging the light duvet a bit to the side. There is no bruise on her hip anymore.

Baekhyeon picks gladness that she gets to see him. For the last time.

“Going anywhere?” Baekhyeon’s chin points toward the few bags hilled near the door. They’re unzipped, but full.

“A bit of travelling.” Her head falls on her outstretched arm. “Should I send you any postcards?” She asks, and maybe she asks for a farewell, or for something to signal the end of them. A disabled fanfare.

“No.” Baekhyeon says. After a few seconds she smiles, slow and sweet, and after a few more she is back asleep.

She doesn’t dream of either of them now, instead she dreams of sunny places, of her mom, of a summer of lazing around, then a new life on a campus brimming with lost younglings.

They’ve shared a short friendship, but not less qualitative.

 

 

 

Before daybreak, Baekhyeon passes the border and arrives at Jongin’s house. He is welcomed by a weirdly vigilant Chanyeol given the hour.

He doesn’t have to say anything - it is quite obvious what he’s here for.

Chanyeol gestures for Yixing, who complies in an instant and goes inside. There is a bite on Yixing’s neck, so fresh that it is still oozing. That blood utterly repulses Baekhyeon, just like it should.

Chanyeol doesn’t ignore him, nor is he acting condescending. He is apprising Baekhyeon, head to toe, his posture, the ironed folds of his attire, the waves of his hair. This is the man his precious Jongin has chosen. It is not his place to be happy or unhappy about it, but in the end, all he wishes for is that Jongin is content.

“You are a great leader, Chanyeol,” he states. Perchance a haughty thing to say.

Chanyeol jolts, taken aback, before he remembers of Baekhyeon’s gift. Jongin talks a lot about it, it appears. Yet he believed that Baekhyeon wouldn’t be listening in on him.

“Sometimes, I can’t really help it,” he says it in an apologetic tone. Truthful. “But alas, there is no one else who can judge you better than I can. And I think you are a great leader.”

He had doubts, a few regrets concerning some decisions, a number of weaknesses he would like to get over. Baekhyeon’s pledge becalmed all of that.

Chanyeol has no chance to reply as a sleepy, pyjama-clad Jongin is stumbling by the door. Everything about him is sluggish, except for the eagerness he is tying his shoes with. 

“You have some goodbyes to offer,” Baekhyeon says, and Jongin walks slowly towards him with puffy eyes and even puffier lips. As he passes Chanyeol, his head drops into an almost imperceptible bow.

A few of the other wolves are hoarding by the entrance, peering with narrowed eyes at them. And Baekhyeon suddenly yearns for their approval, their acceptance, so he tenderly proffers his hand to Jongin, palm up.

There are two steps left until Jongin makes it to him, and from this distance, this far, he is already dashing in order to interlock their fingers, not a drop of hesitance. Without pausing, he goes directly into Baekhyeon’s embrace, his free arm thrown over Baekhyeon’s shoulders. He’s all dwarfed. “Hold me,” Jongin whines thickly.

Baekhyeon bites his lip to suppress the smile threatening to rip his face in half. His fang just about pierces it.

Whispers are travelling from the house. The entire pack is befuddled by the existence of their bond, just like they are, but that doesn’t make it any less right. Their scepticism is understandable. Not everyday it happens for a werewolf to imprint on a vampire, and for that werewolf to be the vampire’s singer.

Out of fatherly unease, Chanyeol wants to separate them, wants to hold on Jongin under his wing just a little longer. But it is him who knows better than anyone the pull of an imprint, how Jongin’s wellbeing depends on Baekhyeon’s company. He relaxes when he sees Jongin clinging to him so tight, his lips drooping into something close to a simper.

“Taeyeon is leaving in an hour,” Baekhyeon clarifies into Jongin’s chest. Jongin tenses, brings him closer. He’s too drowsy for words, for anything else.

Baekhyeon looks at Chanyeol. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t cry.”  

Jongin whines again, aiming him a babyish glower. Yixing’s cheek dimples with a silent chuckle. A pouty Jongin endears him greatly.

Like this, he staggers until he collapses in the passenger seat of Baekhyeon’s car, already curling for a nap.

Baekhyeon lets himself smile, full, happy, and there are a few minds that think he’s beautiful.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon waits farther down the road from her house while Jongin is inside.

Taeyeon scolds him for not meeting more often, mommies him about his studies, his meals, and she will miss him too, will miss him lots, same as she will miss Baekhyeon.

She will come back next summer, she promises, aware that there won’t be a Baekhyeon to return to. He will be going to hospitals across the country to get healthier, he lied.

But Jongin, she’s sure she’ll find. He is supposed to stay, finish high school. So at least she clings to him, vows to call often and send pictures and trinkets.

“Stop growing now. You’re keeping me shadow, and it is cold enough as it is,” Taeyeon says, getting on her tiptoes to pet his head. Jongin has grown up handsome, she observes, not for the first time. Very handsome.

Then she’s climbing into her truck and speeding away.

 

 

 

Jongin knocks on Baekhyeon’s window. Twice, two knuckles.

Baekhyeon is momentarily stricken with Jongin’s prettiness. The brink of his jaw is basked in a harsh shadow, but his cheeks are full and bright under the street lamp. The sadness lining his features doesn’t diminish his beauty.

As soon as Baekhyeon is out of the car, he is being tugged into the woods, and Jongin is already disrobing, throwing each item over Baekhyeon’s head. Baekhyeon simply inhales and inhales into the fabric. He nearly loses footing.  “Take care of them,” he hears. A crunch, a sigh, then a wet nose is pushing at his shoulder.

Baekhyeon takes the clothes to the car whilst Jongin waits for him, a second or two. When he is back, he finds Jongin in a stance that speaks of danger. He is intimidating with his front legs raised on a boulder, his hind legs tense, ready to spring. From his ribcage, the rattle of a continuous, mild growl is audible, similar to the purr of a cat, but nowhere near as calming. He’s definitely crafted to bring the death of the soulless.

Baekhyeon massages the fur between his ears. “You didn’t cry,” he says, “good boy.”

Jongin licks his face.

“How dignified,” he complains, making no move to wipe off the stickiness. Jongin does it once more, on the other side, before he kneels in front of Baekhyeon and stares. His growl heightens and thins, morphing into a whine. Baekhyeon only gets it when Jongin nudges him and lowers completely to the ground.

“I’m sorry I’m an old man and subtleties don’t work on me,” Baekhyeon says as he finally gets it and climbs on Jongin’s back. It’s comfortable - plush softness overtop all the strength he is packing.

Jongin starts with a slow meander, perhaps to get Baekhyeon used to the rocking. It is nice, too much so, and he trails his hands up and down Jongin’s nape. “I like this,” he says, bending to whisper into his twitchy ears. The fur glides by his lips, and this too is very nice. He worries that the change in his centre of gravity puts strain on the wrong part of Jongin’s spine, and he straightens. He makes a point to keep as still as possible anyway.  “I really like it.”

Jongin emits a tiny bark as he speeds up into a sprint, the forest scarce enough to permit them to pass. Witnessing Jongin in his element from such closeness is gratifying. Jongin is letting him experience his other facet, his other form, just when Baekhyeon thought he couldn’t adore Jongin more. 

They come to a halt in a meadow when Jongin is wholly whelmed by exhaustion. He kneels to let Baekhyeon down, courteous. Again, Baekhyeon feels  _cold_  without Jongin. He watches him pace around until his panting subsides, mouth closing.

Transformed, his hair is sticking to his temples from sweat, a heated radiance to his cheeks. He collapses right there on the grass. His heart beats twenty-two times before he looks up at Baekhyeon standing above him.

“You’re blinding me,” he squints, and in another instant, he’s grabbing Baekhyeon wrist and yanking him down, out of the sun. Jongin is the little spoon.

It is still early morning, moist with dew. The last time Baekhyeon’s mind felt so quiet was when he was human and could hear no thoughts. Cuddling with Jongin could never feel as picayune as his previous life did.

“I’ll miss her,” Jongin says.

Baekhyeon thought he was asleep. He turns around, and Baekhyeon begins closing his coat to keep in the chill of his body from transferring into Jongin. Jongin stops him, taking his hands away and getting his arms around Baekhyeon’s middle until they’re pressed flush against each other. He nestles into Baekhyeon’s neck, twining their thighs.

“Me too,” Baekhyeon hums, moulding a kiss to Jongin’s forehead. Jongin drifts off, and for the first time he is glad he doesn’t have a beating heart, for he is sure the thunder of it wouldn’t have let Jongin sleep.

 

 

 

The next day, Xiumin and Kyeongsu are gone. Their adieus are bid through letters. A sentence from Xiumin, a sentence from Kyeongsu, both handwritten by Xiumin, both in Latin.

Sehun doesn’t understand them, but he rivets, clutches the pieces of paper. His lip trembles. He would like to cry, to break down a little. His tears would be just purified venom.

 

 

 

A decade into his infinitude, Baekhyeon’s brother passed away. The funeral had been one fitting for his servant status - poor and dismal. Baekhyeon had been one of the three attendees.

Afterwards, he retired back in the high mountains and took in the scenery - the merry roll of clouds and the fresh waves of the wind. It all kept going on like nothing happened.

He realized then that he is just the same; a permanent fixture to be washed over, and he too is to go on like nothing ever happened.

Since then, he had not felt the need to dwell on the occurring absences. That will perishes when there’s too much time for it.

 

 

 

It’s the middle of summer, full bloom and mosquitoes.

Jongin is tan, tanner, a bit burnt over the bridge of his nose and the tops of his shoulders.

Baekhyeon watches him climb a cherry tree and hooking pairs of cherries on his ears by the stems. He tried putting them in the pockets of his pants and they only ended up squished.

His mouth is red all over, sweetened. There is a dooming to Baekhyeon’s gaze as he notices the staining. How inviting.

As he approaches, there is a stutter to his strides. Then a saddened downturn to his mouth. “My eyes don’t hurt when I look at you.”

It’s midday, the sun high up, and he is wonted to be aglow. Yet his skin carries no gleam. It’s nearly as grim as a human’s.  “Am I not lit up enough for you now?” Baekhyeon questions.

He hasn’t really felt hunger in a while, beside the never-leaving one he has for Jongin. Doesn’t mean he hasn’t noted the scanty erosion of his figure, of his senses. His irises are as dark as Jongin’s.

Jongin sighs, giving him an upset look, then he is gone, and Baekhyeon is left with a lapful of cherries. He nicks one with his nail, and the residue, so semblant to blood in colour, almost has him licking it. Before he can though, Jongin is back. In his hold is a writhing bundle of black feathers.

“Is this good enough?” Jongin asks, presenting the offering.

The crow he has is a decently fat one, clean. It’s knocked out. Jongin probably sent a blow to its head.

His expression is earnest, slightly pouty and so  _hopeful_. Baekhyeon laughs, giddy.

“Never had one of these, truthfully,” he says, taking it. His teeth sink into the flesh just a little. If he goes deeper, he will decapitate it. It is bitter, mildly foul, and surprisingly thick. But it has the nutrients he needs. “Exotic,” he concludes, grimacing, even though he’s drained it.

Jongin bursts into laughter at his face. “Let’s get you something better,” he says, taking his hand and tugging.

Baekhyeon catches a deer. It is ill, the taste affected by the inflammation going throughout its body. It would’ve died in three days at most.

He is done much faster than he expected, taken by thirst as soon as he took the first sip. He feels the strength amassing at his fingertips.

Jongin is looking at him from afar, a soft simper on his face. He beckons Baekhyeon over, calls his name long and sweet, and Baekhyeon, goes, runs, of course, lands right into Jongin’s embrace, right into Jongin’s kiss. They only stop after they break a tree, tangled on top of the splinters.

Baekhyeon’s skin is glowing, his eyes are glowing, and his mouth is happy.

“Now you taste of cherries,” Jongin parts to murmur, turning them so he looms over Baekhyeon. “I really like cherries.”

Baekhyeon wrinkles his nose. “Just cherries?”

Jongin narrows his eyes, licks his lips. “And you. I like you too.”

Baekhyeon squirms, gleeful, and Jongin laughs, his chest pressed to Baekhyeon’s. He stoops to place a peck on each of Baekhyeon’s cheeks, staining them pink with blood and cherry. “Look at you blushing,” he murmurs, soft, warm, and Baekhyeon might just drown in Jongin’s affection and die die die.

 

 

 

Sehun barges through the door, holding up Jongin’s wrist. He shakes it.  “Why does he keep sneaking around?” Sehun roars angrily, scowling at Jongin.

His irascibility is higher now that they have a decline in family members. Still, Baekhyeon will shred him to pieces if he mistreats that wrist one more time.

“Sehun.” Suho appears in the living room. His tone reeks of admonition. There are a few select circumstances it ever takes that note.

Sehun swiftly cowers. Jongin breaks free and carefully approaches Suho. “We need a few of your services?” he says, peering pleadingly at him.

“What is the matter?”

“Jongdae just had his first transformation and he caused some damage.” His face twists. “At least four are heavily injured.” The panic finally shows through. Jongin is trembling.

Baekhyeon is already grabbing the first-aid backpacks that are in Suho’s office. “Babe,” he shows in the living room too, shoulder to shoulder with Suho, looking at him. “Off we go.”

 

 

 

They find Jongdae held in a makeshift cage, two wolves chaperoning him. He is curled into a ball in a corner.

“He’s in shock,” Baekhyeon confirms to Suho’s distressed appraisal. His mind is an anarchy topped with self-loathing. The amount of pain he’s going through is outstanding.

“Someone either get in there with him or let him out,” Suho orders. “Before he ends up a traumatized mess.”

“Comply with whatever he says,” Chanyeol voices over the whole crowd. Some of the wolves present won’t cooperate, Baekhyeon gauges, but nothing that could lead to a physical dispute. The whole house is in a frenzy. A transformation doesn’t usually come with this much aggression, this much ruckus.

So far, they had not time to exchange greetings. Suho grins at Chanyeol, polite. “It is necessary that you have utmost trust in me right now,” he begins, enforces.

Just then a sharp wail is heard, and Suho doesn’t have to say it before Baekhyeon is taking out bottles of anesthetic. Ten times the usual dose. The wailing rises in volume. Baekhyeon nearly feels the anguish himself.

“I do,” Chanyeol says. His eyes narrow as he stares distantly at Jongdae’s coiled form. He definitely feels some pain. “It’s better that one of us approaches him. We don’t know how he will react.”

“I’ll do it,” Jongin insists, taking a few of the bottles from Baekhyeon. He has too much pity, too much determination for Baekhyeon to start fretting over the fact that it will be  _his_  Jongin getting in there with an unstable and incredibly powerful wolf.

Baekhyeon hands him a bunch of syringes. “Do you know how to play with these?”

“Yeah, I’ve done it before.” He runs towards the cage before Baekhyeon can add anything else.

“Why did I have to fall for the brave one,” Baekhyeon groans. Jongdae is already trying to kill Jongin, even if he doesn’t consent to his own body seeking to do so. He’s half-transformed, his limbs morphing in and out of the wolf form. He aims clawed hands at Jongin over and over, kicks, bites.

Jongin manages to restrain him right before Jongdae manages to take a hearty mouthful of his neck, twist him chest down and hold until he gets the first shot injected. Then another, and another. Jongdae softens. He’s not fighting against Jongin anymore, but against himself.

“Better?” asks Suho. Baekhyeon nods.

Jongin hugs Jongdae from behind, arms tense around him, to contain his trembles, his twitches, to offer comfort. He hears him mumbling soothing nothings into Jongdae’s ear, jokes, stories.

“He will burn through that anaesthetic in less than an hour.” Maybe less, but Baekhyeon can’t really estimate the interval through the cloudiness of his mind.

“Good for now. We’ve got others to tend to.”

 

 

 

The injuries they’re sporting are severe. None of them are mildly scathed - they either got involved or they didn’t. Baekhyeon has to snap in a few dislodged bones and suture ruptured organs. Two of them refuse painkillers, and even refuse to scream. They keep it all bottled, mouths shut, eyes shut. A vampire must never see them at their weakest. 

“There is no way I’d assume this doesn’t hurt” Baekhyeon hums, running a threaded needle through the cut in the abdomen of a young woman. A piece of it is missing entirely. “Cry at least.” He blows over the wound after he’s closed it, offering her a small smile, hoping that he’s been as gentle as possible.

Suho is patching up Yixing, whose femur must be fractured again since it healed at the wrong angle, along with splintered fragments.  

“Please don’t reject this,” Baekhyeon pleads, filling a syringe. “If I feel another outburst of agony I’ll be getting out of here with brain damage.”

Yixing is amused, choking out a titter. He twists his arm, exposing the inside of his elbow to Baekhyeon. “Thank you.”

Then Suho breaks him.

 

 

 

“I’m only really here cause’ there’s this little vampo, y’know, the tiny black haired one, yeah. Well, that bitch called my daddy  _babe_  and I’m here to make sure that doesn’t happen again. Ever. Like how dare he? Right? He’s mine. You don’t  _babe_  my stuff. It’s  _my_  stuff and only I can babe it. Right?”

“Right,” Jongdae says, slack but very convinced.

“I have babe rights.”

“Right.”

Sehun is squatting in front of the cage, pinching his nose. His voice is all mangled from it, but at least it blocks some of the stink. Jongdae’s fuzzy and mindless  and Sehun’s ranting is cheering him a bit.

“You were supposed to be waiting in the car,” Suho comments to Sehun. “Hello, Jongdae,” he greets the boy then, kneeling next to Sehun on the ground.

Sehun points to Suho. “This is the babe.”

“Hello, babe,” Jongdae smiles, snoozy and warm. Half of what he perceives are hallucinations.

Sehun’s face falls. 

Baekhyeon squats too. He regards Jongdae softly. “Hello, Jongdae. I’m so glad that you didn’t make me a widow.”

“Hello, bitch.” Jongdae is still smiling. His mouth is kittenish, an adorable curve to it.

Jongin starts laughing like a mad man.

 

 

 

Jongdae is given a shot of a sedative, then washed and put to bed.

Baekhyeon can finally walk into Jongin’s arms, sink into him.  “So quiet. So quiet,” he moans, rubbing his nose on Jongin’s shoulder. His ears are buzzing from all the internal screams he’s heard.

Jongin chuckles. “I thought you hated it.”

“No. It’s great. Can’t get enough of the peace you bring me.” He snuggles there, as the noise in his head finally dwindles. Then he smells something. He looks up at Jongin. “He hurt you bad?” Jongdae’s left a gash on his hip somewhere, he approximates. All healed, but he bled enough for the stain of it to be substantial.

“Just a scratch,” Jongin assures, tightening his hold around Baekhyeon’s waist. “Does it…uhm - ” he searches his eyes. 

“Tempt me?” Baekhyeon chuckles. “Yes. But you always do, so there’s no difference.” He hums, presses his ear to Jongin’s heartbeat. “You’re _all_ sorts of delicious.”

“Are you coming or not?” Sehun then booms impatiently from the car. “I can’t stand this stench anymore.”

Baekhyeon pulls away with reluctance, glares at Sehun, pecks Jongin, then enters the car.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be around. You’ll get used to it,  _vampo_ ,” Jongin promises Sehun before skipping back to his house.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon dresses up, pins a flower to his blazer, tousles his hair. It all speaks elegance until the mess of eyeliner blurring black his waterline.

He has a date with Jongin tonight, like the humans do.

Jongin shows up at his door wearing some fancier garments as well, a collared shirt, red and slender, and solid coloured jeans with a delicate shimmer. A tinted gloss is coating his lips, smelling frailly of vanilla. He is tall and dashing and seductive and cute all at the same time that Baekhyeon is already saying, “We don’t need this date, I’m already all fallen for you,” before they’re even breaching personal space.

Jongin grins-  _the glaze_ \- and shakes his head. “So am I, but we’re still going.” He presents his arm, finely angled at the elbow. “This is for you to take.”

“ _Only_ this?” Baekhyeon pouts.

Jongin just drags him away.

 

 

 

They dine. Jongin stuffs himself to the brim at the restaurant and Baekhyeon getting to kiss him senseless in a corner of the street.

They watch a movie. It is one about a dog that waits and waits for its owner and he never comes back. Jongin gets so emotional that he wolfs down six portions of ice cream afterwards.

They go to a playground. They push each other in swings and try all the slides and break a seesaw and then swiftly flee the crime scene.

On a bench in the park, they present their background, as the supposed protocol of a first date prescribes.

“I’m an only child. My parents own a few estates, and I am the sole inheritor of them. I intend to continue my studies,” Jongin says, all serious, one leg crossed over the other, back straight. He bats his eyelashes. The flirt.

“I had two siblings. My whole family was enslaved. At the moment, I’m exclusively living off the interest I receive for the sum in my bank account. I have thirteen university degrees.” Baekhyeon’s mien is the epitome of solemnity.

“Thirteen?” Jongin’s eyes bug out.

“Oh, I was pegging you to be the kind to be impressed by the money thing. Or the slave thing,” Baekhyeon broods.

Jongin interlaces their fingers together. “I’m impressed all over. We’ll be great…associates.”

“Associates,” Baekhyeon repeats, offended. But then Jongin is drawing him even closer, and _smiling_ , and Baekhyeon can do nothing but melt.

 

 

 

“I’m the adult here,” Jongin states, seeing Baekhyeon to his doorstep like a gentleman.

“I have thirteen university degrees and no retort to that.” Because he is. He _is_. Baekhyeon died at seventeen, and Jongin will never die.

“Perfect.”

 Baekhyeon is a step higher, and they are eye level to each other. Jongin charges a kiss to his cheek, dry even if open mouthed. He persists there until Baekhyeon’s simper deters the piping carving of it. 

“Playing coy now?” Baekhyeon’s thumb wipes under his lip, where the debris of that gloss accumulated. “Even after you came to me wearing this?”

Jongin snatches a kiss on his other cheek. “Now no more coy,” he says, cupping Baekhyeon’s face in his hands. Another press to the tip of his nose.

There is a moment when Baekhyeon can get out of his daze enough to see that something is a bit off with Jongin, a tinge of conflict culminating into disquietude. It’s gone as Jongin steps away from him, looking up through his bangs as he waves.

“Sleep tight,” he says. 

Baekhyeon has no means of obeying that. “You too.”

 

 

 

Soon, Sehun happens to enter into his range. He is practicing his walking, slow and stuttered, hominal. He’s succeeding to some degree, persevering as the traipses the side of their little road.

This is how he bumps into Jongin.

Empty-handed, Baekhyeon closes the door of the fridge, immersing in the provided insight.

Sehun’s first observation is that, within the dim light, Jongin is attractive. He sees it detachedly however, a beautiful man to be someone else’s. When he was a high schooler, Jongin’s kind was definitely his type. Suho crushed every bit of that preference.

“Oh, hi,” Jongin says, only now noticing him. Hearing Jongin’s voice through Sehun’s ears is different. To him, it doesn’t sound like chimes.

“Yo,” Sehun responds, all decorous.

The puzzling expression from before is back on Jongin’s face, now slightly drowsier. He cleans his throat. “You were doing quite well,” he says, gesturing vaguely to Sehun.

Sehun doesn’t believe him. “You haven’t sensed me. I was too quiet. Humans are incompetent as shit at walking.”

“I did, I was just..” He looks away. “Something was on my mind.”

“So I wasn’t too quiet.”

Jongin offers a smile, aslant. “You weren’t very loud either.”

“Damn. I’ll be on my way,” Sehun mutters, and without preamble, he walks past Jongin, leaving him behind.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon is staring him down the very moment Sehun enters the kitchen.

“You heard that,” he states, hoping that it was a question instead.

“Did I?” Baekhyeon taunts. “Did I really?”

Sehun rounds him, opening the fridge and taking out the bag of blood Baekhyeon didn’t. He sucks just a sip through a small hole he cuts into the plastic with his tooth. A brief firework show is presented to Baekhyeon.

“He thinks you don’t want him,” Sehun speaks. It is grave, a register Sehun never dips into.

“How do you know?”

“He was hard as fuck. I could see it from kilometres away, and not because I’m super supernatural and have amazing vision. And you knew that. You do that a lot. You leave him like that a lot.”

Every word ends higher. He is scolding Baekhyeon. “He leaves himself like that,” he says, and it’s weak and overdue.

“Suho was with me like that before, and well, it made sense. But he  _still_  pushes away occasionally. I don’t know what triggers it, but suddenly I’m fragile and he is a demon.”

There have always been fragment of throes looming behind Sehun, but he’s made good work of concealing them. Suho refused him with such vehemence when he was human. It is nearly impossible to keep that hesitance from arising, not after it gnawed at him for so long.

But Sehun is not weak anymore. He can withstand the force of a vampire. Hence, in the end it tallies all the same: not wanting.

“I know this is about that ancient trauma you have because history has been an asshole to you. But you’re not fucking scum or part of Satan’s family or any other shit.” His hand is clenched, not yet into a fist, but not far from it either. “And maybe you don’t remember anymore how it was, but being a teenager sucks. Especially since his hormones are like three times worse because he’s an  _unmated_ wolf. And wolves need that kind of affirmation. So he’s boiling like that continuously. I’m surprised he’s not a mad bitch by now.”

Baekhyeon wants to counter that he’s exaggerating, or plain wrong. He stops. That would be just his denial talking.

“Well, at least Xiumin left you with some wisdom.”

“My ass has always been sage.”

Baekhyeon watches him take just one more sip, then clipping the bag and putting it back in the fridge. Another vampire his age would’ve emptied in in a flash. The bag. The whole fridge.

Sehun is not to be undermined, Baekhyeon notes. He is a person of a new time he could learn from.

 

 

 

What he’s afraid most of is that he there will come a time when he will lose control and Jongin will not even fight him.

 

 

 

Suho is working on his resignation letter when Baekhyeon prances in. He’s recycling the old one, just a few modifications here and there. How he started, why he’s leaving.  The date space on it remains blank - he’ll sign it later. Once he prints it and puts it in an envelope, he asks Baekhyeon.

“How would I look as a professor?”

“Embarrassing.”

Suho imagines himself with some fake glasses, wearing a suit and tyrannizing new-borns.

“Very much so.”

“How about being a high school student?”

A backpack and ratty hoodies. Growing stubble to demonstrate manliness. Suho was twenty-two and married when he died. This premise alone makes him too old for this. The pale blond hair doesn’t help either.

“Sehun would be on a murder spree if he caught whiff of all the lust you get. And history class will put  _you_  on a murder spree.”

“What’s with all this carnage. I reckoned we’ve become creatures of peace.”

“You wait until girls will bend over in front of you so you see their panties. Often, they won’t even be wearing any.”

Suho gapes. “They do that nowadays?”

“They do.”

He balks. “Sehun will indeed be furious.” He recalls a few moments of Sehun hunting, how much of a mess he is capable of making.  

“Without the tacky sweaters then,” Baekhyeon raps his nails on the armrest. “A professor will do.”

 

 

 

Baekhyeon looks around his room. He finds attachment here. It feels like home. They’ve been in this town the longest.

The time to leave is approaching.

 

 

 

They have another date, impromptu, in the forest this time.

They set rules, a route, a finish line. It goes over clear ground, the herbs short, only donning a shrub here and there. Jongin is at advantage - he can reach maximum speed without worrying about tight spaces. He wins by a very short margin.  Regardless, it’s a victory.

Jongin prances merrily around the clearing. His tail is wagging proudly and his tongue is hanging out.

Baekhyeon simpers, and as Jongin comes closer, probably to lick him, Baekhyeon’s scrutiny turns calculative. Jongin is really big. His legs reach past Baekhyeon’s waist, his head about at his shoulder. He is also much longer than Baekhyeon’s height.

“What’s your rank?” it occurs to him to ask. He rubs behind Jongin’s ears.

Jongin transforms, and Baekhyeon takes the bottle of water he has in his pocket to offer him. Seeing Jongin heaving his lungs out like this is after a run is a bit concerning.

“I’m an alpha,” he drops, nonchalant, twisting the cap.

An alpha. Baekhyeon is instantly remembering the semi-cowering posture the other wolves displayed whenever Jongin is nearby. How much freedom he has, allowed to be away from the pack for long periods, likely in order to avoid tensions in authority. This is also why Jongdae couldn’t really hurt him.

“How soon will you be gathering pups under your reign?”

The bottle halts halfway to his mouth. The liquid sloshes like the sky. “Never. I’m not really into  _kinging_.”

He is too childish to be able to train them, too idealistic to take the best decisions, too brave to make them strong on their own. Baekhyeon can see where he’s coming from. Withal, he doubts the longevity of this resolution.

“A crown would suit you though.”

“Then get me one for my birthday,” Jongin challenges. He’s drunk all the water and his respiration is back to normal.  The smirk he’s wearing underneath betrays that maybe he does actually want a crown.

“I’m not promising anything.”

Baekhyeon bends into position at the imaginary start line. Jongin shifts mid-air.

 

 

 

Again, Jongin is the one to claim victory, even if near the end they collided and just tumbled until their momentum dissipated. The tip of Jongin’s tail made it past the finish line.

He is all smug and rosy and his hair is curled at the ends from sweat. Baekhyeon spits out the strands of fur that found their way into his mouth whilst they rolled. They’re very stubborn. He likes Jongin’s skin better than he likes his fur, he decides, as he massages whatever part of Jongin he can reach, because they’re both in a pile on the ground.

Delighted, Jongin purrs at touch. His muscles are flaming, knotted. Baekhyeon hops on his butt and applies all the techniques he’s seen described in a massage course he’d considered taking fifty years ago. He all but dissolves under Baekhyeon’s ministrations, and Baekhyeon doesn’t know how to contain his elation at each and every appreciative sound he makes.

When he turns over, the dopiest of smiles sits on his face. He promptly takes Baekhyeon’s hands and stamps a kiss to each. “I love these.” They look like porcelain, a bit chipped, in the nestling of Jongin’s palms.

Baekhyeon can’t be charmed properly because he has to erupt into peals of chuckles when a loud, angry rumble resounds from Jongin’s stomach. “Let’s get you fed,” he says over Jongin’s embarrassed expression.

Baekhyeon drapes his long coat on him. It’s colder now, progressing into autumn, and Jongin is still wet all over with sweat. Good thing he’s started stealing Sehun’s clothes - the hem of the coat covers Jongin just right.

 

 

 

He sees Jongin to his front door, the house full and cheery behind them. They’ve arrived just in time for dinner.

Baekhyeon feels Jongin’s stomach rolling as he leans in to nuzzle into his neck.

“Have I ever told you how good you smell?” he whispers. It comes out so much better through the layers of sweat. His heart hasn’t yet come to a complete calm.

“You didn’t.”

“It’s the only thing I could never forget about you.” Baekhyeon wants to lick him. He does.

Jongin nuzzles too, and the motion makes the coat fall off one shoulder. Baekhyeon is tugging it back on, irked suddenly by the possibility of anyone else other than him seeing Jongin naked. All this skin is only for him to see. All this Jongin is only for him to have.

“You just smell like something that should be mine.”

A smile, again. It seems that he can’t stop doing that these days. “Hunt me down and seal that deal okay?”

Jongin blushes, but he is also smiling. “That’s no fun. I just beat you twice.”

“I let you win.”

“You didn’t.”

“I totally did.”

“Let me win again next time too?”

Baekhyeon just giggles, drunken, and twines his smiling mouth with Jongin’s equally stretched one before he vanishes into the dark.

 

 

 

In the middle of the day, on the rooftop terrace, a mess of bottles and jars are scattered on a table. Suho is bending over a few boards, a pallet knife in his hand as he blends swatches. With his pinky, he smears lines of them on Sehun’s face.

The substances are thicker than Baekhyeon’s and Suho’s, for the shine of their skin has dimmed. Sehun’s sparkle is full-blown, garish.

He settles on a shade, and taps it carefully all over Sehun. It is so dense that it resembles concrete, prone to cracking into a mosaic at the first sketching of an expression. If the rose amber of his eyes was to be ignored, he could pass for a human.

Earlier today, he’s been measured him for contact lenses too. Baekhyeon saw the confirmation email for an order of a few hundred pairs, some for Baekhyeon and Suho too.

“I’ve never seen anyone want so much to go the mall,” Baekhyeon utters, mixing a sample himself. A this point, he considers taking a handful of cacao and just throwing it at Sehun. It has pretty good coverage, and he would look like a lunatic, so no one would bother approaching him to notice that he is  _super_  supernatural. 

Suho washes the previous layer with his palm, coloured water pouring all over Sehun’s chest and shoulders. “I really really wanna go to the mall,” Sehun says, frowning sharply. He’s perplexed by his own wish. A shopping trip is something so mundane, yet such an experience has been withheld from him previously - his mom bought everything for him, in her own taste - and now he wants to do it himself, to do everything he couldn’t, no matter how banal.

“Also. We just got jealous so of your dates. We want to go on a date too. I’ve got to see how this gramps here will woo me, like with his fancy archaic mating rituals or something.”

Baekhyeon takes a dollop of what Suho is mixing and adds it to his own puddle. “He’s going to put out on the first date,” Baekhyeon says to Suho resolutely. This batter looks about right. He drags it into a cross shape on Sehun’s forehead.

“He knows that. He knows I’m totally his hoe,” Sehun shrugs. He is looking at Suho, who has never even taken his eyes off him. The tint and consistency is fits him perfectly. The hushed gleam showing through the could be credited to well moisturized skin. Suho is so taken that he just floats, not even noticing that he has no idea what the word  _hoe_  means.

Sehun swats at Baekhyeon. “Now go eat grass so you can vomit. It’s very efficient. I tested it.”

 

 

 

On the second day, Baekhyeon is home alone until he isn’t.

He is toying around with a deck of playing cards in the library. They’re some royal ones, heavy, garnished with gold leaf - a gift from a prince Xiumin has saved an era ago. He is looking at a king of hearts with a flamboyant beard when Jongin enters the room. He used the door for once.

“Planning on charming anyone?” Jongin asks. Baekhyeon doesn’t stop shuffling.

“I wasn’t.” He pushes the chair in front of him for Jongin. “But now that I have a beautiful trespasser here with me.” He stops. This deck has three Jokers. He continues.

“Entertain your criminal,” Jongin says, and he leans in, marking a peck on Baekhyeon’s cheek. The place tingles.

“Does my criminal know poker?”

“It’ll be more fun if you find that out along the way.”

 

 

 

Baekhyeon is still towelling his hair dry as he walks into his room clad in just pair of boxers.

Jongin has been drowning his sorrows in apples for being magnificently beaten by Baekhyeon at their many rounds of gambling. There are a few cores piled on a corner of the nightstand.

“I just encouraged your fruit addiction. I’m sorry,” Baekhyeon says, not being sorry at all. He keeps rubbing at his hair until it sticks in all directions.

Jongin glints to him, then does a double take, piqued. His mouth splits, his whole face scrunching into a startling leer.  His heart rate derails, a reaction rapid and brutal enough that Baekhyeon can see the netting of his vessels under his skin inflating.

It hits Baekhyeon that this is the first time he is in such and advanced state of undress in front of Jongin. He’s seen Jongin nude more often than he’s seen him clothed, but it didn’t once cross his mind one that maybe Jongin wanted to see him too. He drapes the towel over his shoulder, and looks down. His toes are digging repetitively into the carpet.

Baekhyeon can’t believe that he’s s _elf-conscious._

Jongin emits a short stifled noise, swallows, throws the rest of the apple into the core heap, before he is clearing his throat and trying again. “Come here,” he says, lower and huskier than ever. He comes to the edge of the couch, coaxingly peering up at Baekhyeon.

Baekhyeon is walking before he realizes. Jongin, from his seated position, winds his arms around his middle, bringing him in, and resting his head on his stomach. Baekhyeon struggles to loosen the musculature there, for Jongin’s stay to be pleasant, but he  _can’t_ , because Jongin is puffing cute little sighs into him and it tickles so much that it’s nearabout unbearable.

Before Baekhyeon can wrest himself out of the hold, Jongin speaks. “It’s so quiet in there.” Wonder is splattered all over his voicing. His ear moves from place to place, dragging along the border of his thorax. “Breathe,” he asks, and Baekhyeon complies, a small hiccup first, then his chest expands. “Sounds like how the wind blows in horror movies.” On either side of his lower back, Jongin’s palms are slightly damp.

“You hear the ghosts?” Baekhyeon asks, exhaling to take another drag.

“Are there any?”

“Of course. I keep the souls of all that I’ve killed in there.” At odd times, his heart seems to squeeze, draw into itself as if pinched, and he thinks it might be their revenge, their soupcon of satisfaction, of getting back at him.

Baekhyeon’s hand is a small breadth away from getting into Jongin’s soft locks. They’re already so much longer and silkier since the day they’d fought, the day they’d first met.

“You’ve killed many?”

Baekhyeon’s hand drops back by his side, away from Jongin. The reply comes to him instantly, but his mouth is sodden with  _something_  and won’t obey just yet. “Yes.” He closes his eyes and he tries to remember the screams of all of them. But they didn’t even get the chance to scream. That number is well into the hundreds. All Baekhyeon recalls is how he couldn’t stand the weakness that came with starvation - and that dislike had been stronger than any remorse, any empathy.

Jongin tows him even closer, his arms steely around him. “Lies,” he mutters. “It’s way too quiet in there.”

“Maybe they’re asleep.”

“They’re not,” Jongin says, and it is definite, assertive, as his head lifts, eyes meeting Baekhyeon’s downcast ones. He can’t be convinced otherwise. And it is so heartbreakingly endearing how much Jongin wants to believe that Baekhyeon is  _good_ , that he is not a merciless monster who knows nothing but thirst.

He can tell now that it is venom filling his mouth, dense and thick, concentrated. Baekhyeon averts his gaze, only to be greeted with the sight of himself reflected into the window, expression ungiving, square, and lower, the pretty, sun kissed slope of Jongin’s back, rounded a bit as his head rests on Baekhyeon.

Agape, rounded lips etch around his belly button. Hands frame his hipbones, soft and tentative, as fingers sink into the flesh with a tender scratch, wet, and Baekhyeon’s reels, off balance, jaw tight. It feels wrong to be given pleasure. And so much of it.

“Jongin,” he says, not unlike he did when Jongin kept bleeding above him. A warning and a plea all at once.

The contact breaks, just barely so. Jongin is in a stupor, turbid, his eyes fraught with excitement. Two of his fingers are by the elastic band of Baekhyeon’s underwear. “Why do you always wear these so tight?” he asks and all Baekhyeon hears in his inquiry is that he  _needs_  to be wanted, and he needs to give.

Baekhyeon looks at the digits. They whitened around the tips from the tension between the skin and the band.

The answer rots in his throat as Jongin’s mouth is on his stomach again, sucking and biting and licking, lavishing the skin. He pulls away, and there is no mark, no indent, nothing but a patch of glistening saliva. “Does this do anything for you? At all?”

Baekhyeon wishes he could read his thoughts, so he could be sure what clarification, what assurance he needs other than what his wavering words convey.

“It does. It does, Jongin.” Baekhyeon takes the hand from his hip and guides it lower, between his legs, where the outline of his cock fills the material. Jongin’s breath hitches as he feels it and Baekhyeon swallows a growl at the touch. “It doesn’t…grow,” Baekhyeon says, his fangs suddenly getting in the way. “How could it? I have no pulse.” It doesn’t sound self-pitying anymore. “So it stays at full size, all the time.”

Astonishment stains Jongin’s features. It is short lived though, the ridges of his lips curving with curiosity. His palm goes over the length again, fingers fitting against it, and it lifts into the cupping. Baekhyeon quakes. “It does that though, because of you. The mechanics of it are unknown.”

Jongin’s digits part, dropping into the crevasses made by the coil of his cock with the insides of his thighs.  He shatters into a sunny grin. “It sort of makes sense.”

“It barely makes any,” Baekhyeon counters, to distract himself from Jongin. His body temperature is higher just from being near him.

“It makes absolutely none,” Jongin admits with defeat, with laughter. “But sounds fun.”

He dandles along Baekhyeon’s cock again, his nails leaving teasing lines until the head pushes at the cloth with a determination forceful enough to tear it. Before that can happen, he slides the boxers down, the tight fabric dragging slowly down his legs. Jongin comes to soothe the place where the waistband sat low on his lips, stippling petite kisses as soft hushes, as if it gave Baekhyeon an ache.

“Try to show me,” Jongin whispers and Baekhyeon sees him like an unsure kid, and it is along with this that he realizes that this is how everyone feels, blind, as he is in Jongin’s presence. “Show me that you like it.”

Baekhyeon remembers that he’s practiced that with Kyeongsu, and gives a modicum of a chortle.

“I’ll try my hardest.”

Then Jongin’s hand climbs up his thighs, the back of them, and squeeze at his ass as Baekhyeon steps closer, right into the opening of Jongin’s legs. Kisses keep trailing down until they reach the base of his cock. It burns up his back, a distal lash of beatitude, and it is indeed arousal, a million times stronger than he remembers sexual pleasure to be. Jongin is keen on offering him more, gliding the flat of his tongue on the underside, slow and through, before taking the head into his mouth. His hands never stop feeling him up, their grasp prudent, like he is delicate, like he deserves the world, all the while bringing him in. “You’re so beautiful,” Jongin says, letting go of his cock with a suckle, mindless, and it is then that Baekhyeon moans, his chest alight with a budding joy that slits through him.

Baekhyeon breaks free of his grasp and drops to his knees. He grabs Jongin by the nape to bring him in, take his mouth, the plump parting of it willing under his own, frenzied.

“I can stop,” Baekhyeon implores, and he didn’t know that  _this_  is what he wanted, “let me.” He noses beyond Jongin’s jaw and his carotid artery is just- “I can stop.”

He can. Of course he can. He doesn’t have it in himself to harm Jongin in any way. He can trust himself with a tiny sip.

Jongin’s pupils are flared, a perfect, endless black. He is unmoving, a furore of conflict brushing by his face. The thrum of lust racing through him is blaring however, obvious, from the splatter of reds on his skin to his fitful panting.

He’s been in this state before, desirous, smouldering.  He’s a youngling, still human enough to be turned on by any other thing. And he  _did_ catch Jongin keeping himself from pining over Baekhyeon’s noxious saliva, the longing to relive the surge of euphoria Baekhyeon had given him before. He wouldn’t ask for sex, and he wouldn’t ask for Baekhyeon to bite him. Instead, he would say  _you’re sexy as fuck_  to Baekhyeon after he kisses him, and Baekhyeon’s lips don’t really swell, he doesn’t really pant or blush, but he is entirely another brand of debauched after Jongin has his way with him.

“Okay,” he says, frail into a sigh, but sure, beseeching. He sweeps his thumb by Baekhyeon’s mouth, only to press a bit into the corner of it. He has a small dimple there when he grins, and Jongin offers him just that. Trust and a smile is all he needs.

He picks his inner thigh, high up, where softness is gathered, where there isn’t a strong wall of muscle. The flesh is plush, silky, and Baekhyeon’s gums ache around the root of his fangs. The fragrance of him is more potent here, clean, carnal, piquant. He prepares the area with a few licks and a suck. It puffs on his tongue, draws stiff, fills with blood. He bites just a little, just with his front teeth, making a shallow slit. As he gazes up, Jongin’s previous look of captivation dissolves. He collapses on his back with an exhale akin to a mewl, his abdomen tensed, his fingers curled and taut.

Baekhyeon bites the same spot, has the skin splitting open, and licks over the nip relentlessly, pushing venom into Jongin as he receives a fine stream of blood. Jongin’s moan loses sound, engulfed by rapture, and Baekhyeon would like to see what kind of swirls colour Jongin’s bliss, what his ecstasy looks like.

The wound is shallow enough for it to be able to suture soon, even with Baekhyeon’s venom saturating it. Jongin’s sweetness imbues into him, robbing him of his sense of self. His legs give out on him. This state is similar to the high he would get when under the influence of opium, when he’d been stealing from the head servant - lost and weightless. His palate is blazing, riled with pain. His mucosa is breaking own, crumbs of it collecting on his tongue.

Jongin picks him up in his lap, dopey smile meeting dopey smile and Baekhyeon is pretty sure this is the most perfect moment ever. They meet into a kiss, soft at first, until Jongin’s gasping hastens, his pliancy gone as he tastes himself on his tongue, yearning to pacify the damage his blood is doing to Baekhyeon.

There is a minute twitch, his touch too cold, but then he is moaning again, whines lodged in his throat, as he tugs Baekhyeon sneaks his hand down and takes a hold of Jongin’s cock. His fingers can’t enclose fully around the circumference from this position, so he brings his other hand too, twisting them together until Jongin chokes on his own pleas.

Jongin’s touch makes it to him, his wrist locked between the crossing of the two of Baekhyeon’s. His grasp is firm, and Baekhyeon’s cock is pure harness, no throbbing and no give, Jongin’s motions incessant all over him. When Baekhyeon loses rhythm, rattled by pleasure, Jongin’s pulse seems to sear through his cock from the proof that Baekhyeon is indeed enjoying himself. It mirrors - Baekhyeon is kindled by the reaction, moving his hips into Jongin’s for their cocks to grind together, chest to chest and mouth to mouth.

Jongin comes in his hand, warm and thick and generous, and Baekhyeon bites into the juncture of Jongin’s shoulder as he comes too, a deep bite, with the fangs this time. Baekhyeon’s body raves under him, eyes rolling back, as he clutches onto Baekhyeon with the same strength Baekhyeon clutches onto him. The blood is so little, and it tastes entirely different, ambrosial, enriched honey, and Baekhyeon puts all his might into  _not_  sucking, just sealing his mouth over it and relishing into whatever oozes out.

Jongin is panting, his heart in frenzy, and Baekhyeon just settles and listens at the beautiful thrum of him.

His finger moves over the bite mark, edges swollen around the brink of the punctures. They’re of a furious red. The skin around it breaks in goose bumps. “Look what I did,” Baekhyeon says, slurred by the heaviness of his marred tongue. Jongin’s blood made him so weak. Worth it, even if he feels as if he’s decaying from the inside.

“You just made me yours,” he says, voice worn from all the moaning, and it is such a simple little truth spoken by a boy who is convinced that he’ll never have anything better.

“We didn’t break any furniture,” Baekhyeon says, looking around. Even that is tiring. Perchance, he can even drift off.

“Wait until I get to mark you,” Jongin says, nearly no promise to it as he pendulates on the brink of slumber.

“I’ll hold you to that.”

Baekhyeon doesn’t even need dreams.

 

 

 

In the middle of autumn, he flies to another city, another land with Suho, somewhere high up north, where they buy another house. Everything bundled in snow, the whistle of coursing blizzards drilling through the foliage of olden fir trees.

Most of the walls of the house are glass. They have a good history with that.

 “Maybe we’ll feast on a polar bear once or twice,” Baekhyeon says, taking in the view. The window is cold enough for his breath to fog on it. The forest ahead is sparse, short herbs and bald twigs. A tall pine here and there. Thick snow blankets the ground. Come morning, the sun will spill prettily over it.

“Plenty of rabbits for Sehun too, I assume,” he muses. Tell-tale footsteps curl across the white surface.

“Have a little faith in him,” Suho sighs, hitting his shoulder.

He locks the door. They’ll be coming back soon.

 

 

 

On the flight back, Baekhyeon bores of flirting with the lady from across the aisle.  She’s all soaked through after two of his lip bites and a wink.

He turns to Suho, who is faking a nap.

 “Why were you so troubled by Kyeongsu’s arrival?” No one hears, nor sees a thing.

Suho tugs the provided blanket higher over his face. He recalls to flutter his eyes periodically.

 _Sehun, what else_ , he thinks. He’s given the lurid sight of Kyeongsu murdering six people per night, calm, his technique not even feral anymore but nimble, coordinated, then stacking the dried bodies in a pyramid. They were prisoners, slaves, their skeleton prominent through the rugged skin. Most of them couldn’t have seen twenty springs. Suho had a fixation with the lice clotted into their hair. “ _What if he was still like that. What if still lived the old way. What if Sehun would have found someone to drag him that sort of practice, would have let him taste just how--_ “ There is no word for that. The mania that comes from having so much power and acting on it can’t be defined. “ _What if he made Sehun_ kill, _”_ Suho thinks, and Baekhyeon picks that this is not a possibility he has entirely let go of yet. “ _I took the life away from that boy. The least I can do is make sure he doesn’t end up drowning in regret._ ”

Baekhyeon takes Suho’s hand. “He turned out excellent,” he says. Suho perhaps needed to hear this sooner, for his mind becomes utterly serene, nothing hiding, for the first time since they’ve known each other.

 

 

 

When he is back, a few days later, Jongin is waiting for him. He is not wasting a second as he noses into his neck, opening his shirt and fitting his teeth over the slowly healing mark to renew it. He is tremulant, from joy, from comfort, from nothing in Baekhyeon’s tightening embrace, just because this is where he belongs.

 

 

 

Baekhyeon doesn’t bring it up, doesn’t ask about it. Jongin just surveys the pile of boxes stacked high in the garage, face blank, monochrome. His arms tense, as if he perpends fighting it.

Baekhyeon begins retreating, to leave Jongin alone for a moment. Influencing his decision on such a matter can bring nothing but discord.

A hand encircles his wrist as he passes Jongin by just half a step. It is an irresolute touch, feather-light, fingers bent but flaccid. Baekhyeon waits, lingers, craves for them to bind, to keep him there.

When it finally happens, Baekhyeon is turned around and faced with a bleary grin.

“Thank you,” Baekhyeon says, and puts his all into kissing that smile to its fullest. “Thank you, Jongin.”

 

 

 

From Jongin’s pack, only a few know that he will be leaving with Baekhyeon. But when the day of the actual departure comes, none of them seem surprised.

Jongin cries Baekhyeon’s shoulder as he tries to hide behind his small frame. “The young ones can’t see an alpha all snotty like this,” he croaks there, only for Baekhyeon. In this light, Baekhyeon takes the chance to promise them all that he will take care of Jongin.

He is met with silence, but their hearts are warmed by Baekhyeon’s obvious sincerity.

“He just needs chicken,” someone shouts from the crowd, breaking the ice. “He’s quite low maintenance.”

They laugh, all of them in agreement to the severity of Jongin’s chicken addiction. “I thought it was cherries,” he mutters, only for Jongin, and he starts laughing too, smearing snot all over Baekhyeon’s back.   

“I will  _annihilate_  you if you ever hurt him,” Chanyeol says, eyes sad. The emphasis on that vow is a grin.

 

 

 

He has nearly no luggage – only a lone little suitcase in the trunk of Baekhyeon’s car.

Suho hugs him when he steps into the empty villa. “Welcome to the family,” he says. Off the barren walls, it echoes kindly.

Sehun scowls. “I won’t be your momma, motherfucker.”

Beyond that expression, he is glad, so glad that they’re one more soul away from sinking into loneliness.

 

 

 

‘Tiddies’ it says on the front of Suho’s backpack, huge in pink glitter. The rest of it is covered in intelligible drawings and scrawls. From one of the pockets, a handful of neon markers threaten to spill over.

He joins on the porch Baekhyeon, dropping the backpack at the foot of the recliner. They both stare in the distance at the duo practising in the snow.

This choreography uses props - canes, and both Jongin and Sehun have been fiddling with them incessantly these days. Baekhyeon wants to ask Suho school was. H’s a sophomore in high school now. Did he pass that test? Was he nice to the kids? But all the questions die on his tongue because the boys stop fumbling around and actually sync into a dance.

Baekhyeon’s throat constricts.

Beside him, Suho swallows. “They’re pure sex,” he squawks, cool as a cucumber.

“Bloody hell they are,” Baekhyeon nods. Tactfully, he crosses his legs.

“I call dibs on the raven one.”  

Jongin’s does a  _spectacular_  hip thrust. Baekhyeon feels slightly deceased. “Mr. Hips is all fucking mine.”

“Deal.”

 

 

 

Baekhyeon’s is Jongin’s professor for four years of college. It’s quiet and bright and the locals are extremely friendly. They pretend to be total strangers to one another until they sneak into corners to make out so hard that they just about crumble the building to the ground. At home, Baekhyeon will be wearing Jongin’s uniform and cooking for him the finest of dishes.

 

 

 

Sehun has two million followers on Instagram. He posts pictures of nature, shots that could never be taken without being able to meander like a vampire - closed caves and rare birds and animals mid-attack. When people ask him to post a selfie, he puts on a wig and a dress, dabs blood on his lips and poses as a young woman in her twenties. Jongin takes these shots, making sure his face looks similar in all the photographs, but different from how he looks in real life.

“Nuclear weapons,” Baekhyeon sing songs every day as he passes by Sehun fiddling with his camera.

 

 

 

For a month, Baekhyeon and Jongin are away in other city, another continent. They go to casinos, another one every night. Jongin is holding a glass of whiskey in one hand and the heart of the entire table in the other. The dealer plays the cards in Jongin’s favour round after round.

Then Baekhyeon comes along, takes a seat, leans back and wins everything. Jongin is at his last chip. The other patrons crowd around them with interest.

Baekhyeon offers him his ring, to deal one more hand, the gold of it dazzling on the red velvet of the table. Jongin takes it, plays, and Baekhyeon loses.

In the end, they are out with the same amount of money they had when they got in. “Come, I’ll buy you chicken,” Baekhyeon says as they leave the casino. Then he giggles and watches with never-dying fascination as Jongin wolfs down everything.  

 

 

 

On Sehun’s thirtieth birthday, they go out to a club. Sehun pesters Suho into dancing, guiding him into the middle of the dance floor and swaying slowly with him.

Someone breaks a bottle on someone’s head. Blood spills everywhere. Baekhyeon tenses, already stepping forward. Suho’s hold on Sehun is hard, prepared to block him if he is to lose control.  

Sehun notices it, relishing into the smell of fresh, warm, exposed human blood for the first time. A burn runs down his throat. But then he’s swallowing, taking Suho’s steeled hands away from his arms and gently bringing them back to his hips. “Like this,” he just whispers, resuming his swing.

Suho goes into him, smiling himself stupid.

Baekhyeon looks up at Jongin, pride twisting his face. “He’ll be third wheeling us to uni from now on,” he declares.

 

 

 

At night, Jongin is mantled in moonlight, Baekhyeon’s head in between his legs bestirring ripples on his thighs, his stomach, his neck as it strains, bent away and open, available.  Baekhyeon works with the verve of an unquenchable man, jaw passive so he takes as much of Jongin’s cock as possible, gagging for real on him.  The taste is distilled, crystalline, just Jongin, just what Baekhyeon loves most. Tallying by the volume and breathiness of Jongin’s groans, he’s as blissed out as Baekhyeon is. Jongin lifts, fisting his hair with a hand, thumbing at a corner of Baekhyeon’s stretched lips with the other, a caress that calculates just how far Baekhyeon lets him go down his throat.

“I can’t believe you--“he hiccups. Baekhyeon surges forward, swallowing around him whilst his tongue swirls. Jongin comes, a grand upheaval of shudders and gasps.  Baekhyeon manages to pull away at the first drop, no longer able to contain the protrusion of his fangs.  He lets just the head rest on his lower lip as the come pools on his tongue, his hand working at the base, before he lets go entirely of him. Now Baekhyeon’s mouth feels cold.

“You can’t believe I what?” Baekhyeon asks a still delighting Jongin.

“Mm?” Jongin hums. The last of twitches go through his cock, opalescent fluid building on the tip. Baekhyeon automatically leans in to lick it. “I didn’t say anything.”

Baekhyeon takes his time swallowing the drip. “I’m sure you did.”

“I didn’t.”

Baekhyeon struggles to put no hope in his words. “What were you thinking though?”

“I don’t remember exactly. I mean you  _are_  a professional sucker so…” His eyes flutter, side-tracked by the revival of that pleasure. “I thought it was amazing that you took me so well?” Muddlement mixes with his waning euphoria.

Baekhyeon looks up, at the bright sky, and he has the urge to scream. His chest is vibrating. “Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. Jongin Jongin Jongin!” He jumps him, wrapping himself around all of Jongin, sprinkling him with kisses and grins and coos and other gooey manifestations of his overwhelming jow. “I think I heard you. I heard you. I did. Jongin. I heard you. _Jongin_!” 

“R-“ he can’t breathe from Baekhyeon squeezing him so hard. “Really?” he croaks.

“More. I want more,” Baekhyeon is already climbing down Jongin’s body, hand on his cock. “Good thing I’m a professional sucker,” he says, eager.

 

 

 

Later, Baekhyeon is vomiting four loads of cum. He lifts his head, wipes his mouth, and regards Jongin with a scowl.

“So have you been referring to me as Cutie Pup Baek in your mind all along?”

Jongin just pales, transforms, barks once in Baekhyeon’s direction, and runs away.

 

 

 

The house rule states that instead of quarrelling with each other and destroy everything in their path, Jongin and Sehun are to go outside and wrestle as a means of settling their conflicts. Twice, Sehun complains that Jongin is so hot that he leaves puddles all over.

“He’s gonna melt this entire fucking glacier.”

Baekhyeon continues polishing his violin. “So he beat you.”

Sehun growls, and goes upstairs to change.

The third time, they both come home soaking wet, Jongin’s eyes wild, and Sehun’s-

“I made him take down a bear,” Jongin grins. Sehun’s amber irises are sporting an intensity they haven’t had before. They seem to be made out of real gold.

“Congratulations,” Baekhyeon says.

“It was about damn time,” Jongin comments, just to irritate Sehun.

“Well, fighting with someone of similar…species turned out to be useful.” His mouth wobbles, disliking what it is admitting.

“Go brag to Suho,” Baekhyeon ushers him.

 

 

 

In the same country, but another city, Baekhyeon hires himself as private detective. He comes home at five thirty, attired in slacks and sheer shirts, hair done up and dishevelled with care.

As he drinks some blood, he relies to Jongin all the scandalous family drama he has to sort out. But other times, Jongin will be looking at him darkly before he even gets to put his briefcase down. Jongin grabs his tie, yanking. Baekhyeon’s neck has no give. Jongin yanks until the fabric it breaks.

“So sad that we can’t try breathplay,” he mumbles. He takes the section of the tie still in his hand and knots it around and over Baekhyeon’s thyroid. “You’re always elegant. But now even more so. With a collar from me.”

“Am I a sexy pup?” Baekhyeon asks.

 _Yes_ , Jongin thinks.

He takes it upon himself to undress Baekhyeon all the way, then tug him into the woods until he is covered in mud and leaves and Jongin’s saliva like he should be.

 

 

 

“Your fangs are great,” Baekhyeon babbles, toothpaste dripping down his chin. “Maybe even better than mine. You could bleed someone dry so fast.” The white foam splashes on his nightshirt. “Why don’t you like blood? Blood is great. You’re wasting the fangs.”

In the mirror, Jongin stops brushing. He spits and rinses. “Fries with ketchup,” Jongin deadpans. “It’s heaven.”

Baekhyeon pinches his ass. 

 

 

 

Baekhyun tries imagining how it is to be finite, to have everything counted, to be only as alive as his fragility allows. This train of thought has been breaking off at the same point for over a hundred years - epilogues only happen to the ones who have nothing worth remembering.

                                                                                                    

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Sehun is me. So pls don't leave me alone too much, yeah? 
> 
> Good. Sweet. n_n


End file.
